The late lamented “Room 101” was a comedy programme on which people could talk about the things that made them angry. Well, I don’t know about you, but over the last couple of years I’ve definitely become more and more angry about more and more things. Some of those things are trivial and make me sound obnoxiously self-righteous: I get annoyed by people who get on the bus and only then start rummaging around for their purse and credit card; I get angry (though I never say anything) with people who swim too fast in the slow lane of the pool; and I get really cross every time I see the long line of cars – all with their engines running – queueing at the McDonald’s Drive Thru.

But I’ve been getting angry at more serious things too, for instance at Covid – firstly at the virus itself, secondly at people who claimed that it was all a conspiracy to make us submit to Government, and thirdly at politicians who, time and time again, seemed slow to take decisive action. I got angry about Brexit, especially (and I’ll say it) at the lies which were peddled to get it through, at the gung-ho attitude to the chaos which everyone could see would follow our departure from the European Union, at the wasteful ‘jobs for the boys’ which seemed to be part of the process.

I got angry – as did so many others – at the racial injustice which was brought to the fore by the killing of George Floyd and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement; and I got angry at the appalling way the police treated the murder of Sarah Everard and its aftermath. I got angry at Climate Change: not at the issue itself, which concerns me deeply, but at the extravagant conference held in Glasgow which predictably achieved little and must have made its own contribution to global warming (I must say that I’ve also been angered by the tactics, though not the message, of Extinction Rebellion). And I’ve been angered by the way that the wealthy have so little idea of how “the other half live” and seem to care so little for their plight.

Well, that’s my little list; I’m sure that those are only some of the issues that have made me angry during that period. But, of course, there have been more recent ones which have fuelled my rage: the Government’s ill-thought, inhumane and, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘ungodly’ plan to shunt refugees ‘out of sight, out of mind’ to Rwanda; our Prime Minister’s constant wriggles, fudges and lies about Partygate; and, above all, the horror and barbarity of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. I’m usually mild-mannered and calm (at least I think I am!); however I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to take my blood pressure and found the reading to be off the scale. These have been frustrating and stressful years for us all.

Underlying all these angers has been another one which goes to the heart of my faith. For, I have to ask myself, have I also been angry at God: angry that, although he calls himself “love”, he doesn’t seem to care about rampant injustice and human suffering, angry because. although he calls himself “the almighty”, he either doesn’t or can’t do anything in response to millions of people’s desperate prayers? Do I, deep down, start saying either, “This isn’t a God who’s worthy of my faith” or “Perhaps it’s all been an illusion and God doesn’t exist at all”? Please don’t be shocked by my honesty; I’m sure that many of you have asked the same questions at different moments in your life.

Before I go on I must say that sometimes – perhaps usually! – we get angry at God for the wrong reasons. We are not getting angry because of the way he seems to be ignoring suffering or injustice in the world but simply because he doesn’t seem to be working things out for us personally in the way we’d expected and hoped for. In other words, we are angry with God because, in fact, we have been self-centred in our wants and desires. At times like these God has to teach us a lesson and say, “You are simply looking in on yourself; how dare you rage at me?” And, of course, he would be entirely justified in his reaction!

I’d like to read you two poems. The first is part of a monologue by the Jewish author David Kossoff. It’s from a series of prayers which all begin in the same way: “You have a minute, Lord?” Kossoff is perplexed and saddened by the death of a small boy.

What can a person say, Lord
Is it all thy will being done, Lord?
Or did your attention wander for a minute?
One doesn’t like to question, Lord, but the question comes up. Often.
And what can a person say?
To talk of your ‘mysterious ways’ and your ‘plan beyond our understanding’ is no great comfort, Lord.
Not to the parents of an eight-year-old beauty with a bloom –
even in death – like a perfect peach.
What can you say, Lord?
I’ll be honest, Lord.
I feel anger. Not against you, dear Friend,
But I hate waste – and I don’t like not being able to do something.
I use (I’m sorry) bad language;
I bang things with my fist; feel hot, dry-eyed.
Am I wrong, Lord? With the anger? I’m not the only one.
A person can’t help it.

My second poem is by a Christian: the Methodist theologian Andrew Pratt. It echoes the words of a man whose young wife died suddenly.

‘God, I hate you!’
screams the anger of my stone-cold grief;
God, I need you,
in this anguished taunting misbelief.
God, I need you
cowering, failing, falling from your peace;
God, I love you, try to love you,
help the hatred cease.
God, I love you in my anger,
dispossessed by grief;
Love me even though I hate you;
Hold me, show me peace.

Those prayers are poignant and heartfelt; they are also honest and very different from the formal prayers we often use in church. But they may leave us with uncomfortable questions such as, “Can we really use this kind of language in our prayers?” and “Is it right to be so angry and irreverent with the Lord of the universe?” These are real questions which I’ll try to answer this morning; but, in fact, I can do that right now in a single sentence. If you take nothing else away from the sermon, please remember this: it’s OK to be angry at God, it’s all right to be honest with him, he’s definitely big enough to take it! Christian reverence is clearly a good thing; but there are raw and painful times in life when genteel politeness simply gets thrown aside.

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f you look at the Old Testament, you’ll soon discover that Judaism has a long tradition of being remarkably open and honest with God. Psalm 2 opens with a hard question: “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?”; Psalm 10 says, “Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”; and the refrain of Psalm 42 asks, “Why have you forgotten me?” And Psalm 37 asks a question which I am sure many of us have asked many times over: why do the wicked prosper while God’s people continue to find life difficult? Why does God seem have forgotten people who are suffering pain or injustice – especially when that person is me?

And of course it’s not just in the Psalms that we find people who are angry with God: there is Jonah, feeling humiliated because he’d been rather looking forward to seeing God destroy evil Nineveh, and of course Job, who has tried to live a blameless life and cannot fathom why death and disaster seem to have been flung at him from all directions.

Now, anger can be a terrible thing. It can unleash a huge amount of energy which means – as too many news items inform us – that angry people can carry out superhuman acts. Those acts can be destructive and violent: angry people use strong and ugly words, get into fights, go out and kill, storm into other peoples’ relationships or even climb into the cab of a bulldozer and demolish their neighbour’s house. No Christian should ever exhibit this kind of unrestrained fury (though most of us come close at times): in at least four of his letters Paul explains how Christians should be under the control of the Holy Spirit, who simply doesn’t act like that. In fact he says that anger needs to be dealt with on a daily basis rather than allowed to build up inside us.

But let’s get back to thinking about our prayers. It’s obviously right that we respect God – in fact we should probably be more reverent than we often are! But it also seems right to me that a religious faith which never allowed us to express our deepest feelings in honest prayer would be completely useless to us. That kind of faith would leave us high and dry precisely when we most needed its support. Just imagine what it would be like if we cried out to God because of some pain or injustice which was tearing at our innermost being, only to be told, “Now, behave yourself. You can’t speak to me like that”. Or for us to be incoherent with grief and pouring out our sorrow and find God saying, “Just pull yourself together and speak politely, or else I’ll ignore you”. Those responses would make God into a cruel and heartless ogre, and I simply don’t believe that he is like that. What I do believe, as the hymn says, is that there is nothing at all we cannot carry to God in prayer: after all, that’s what honest relationships are all about. And, whatever we might say, God is big enough to take it.

So perhaps our thinking can go in another direction. I spoke about the energy which anger can release, often to disastrous effect. But perhaps there’s another way: perhaps that energy, fuelled by prayer, can be used constructively to inspire actions, motivate campaigns for justice, or set projects into motion, all with the aim of righting wrongs and allowing human beings to flourish as God intends. It is very easy for us to see the woes of the world but remain disengaged from them and let them wash over us – certainly that’s my problem. So perhaps we should allow ourselves to become emotionally involved and driven to see things change. After all it was that kind of righteous anger which fuelled agitation against the slave trade, and the American Civil Rights movement; and which today inspires the demands for things such as trade justice or action against those who traffic women for sex. That kind of simmering anger against wrong can get things done; in fact, it may well be an anger that God himself has placed within us.

You may still have doubts about whether all this is appropriate. But let me take you back a few days, back past Easter Sunday to Good Friday and Jesus hanging on the cross. In physical agony, bearing the weight of human sin and feeling completely isolated from his Father, he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” – a cry of desolation and desertion. Does he hear a voice from heaven saying, “How dare you talk to your Father like that?” Of course he doesn’t; in fact God is accepting his sacrifice for the sin of the world. So, if Jesus can be utterly honest with his Father, then surely so can we.