Angry Worship and Preaching: Embodying Context and Text in Liturgy – Part 2

Abstract

In the second part of this article exploring angry liturgy and preaching, a preliminary theory of liturgical and homiletical praxis for angry liturgy and preaching is developed. The theoretical exploration of anger from Part 1 is developed by means of explicating the themes of angry listening, angry hermeneutics, practices, and strategies for angry preaching, and angry liturgy as a liturgical and homiletical praxis theory.

1. Introduction

An article entitled “Angry Preaching” analyzed sermons preached in Afrikaans Reformed churches on the topic of anger by making use of grounded theory. ¹ The coding showed that most of the sermons followed the same pattern, which was described in terms of the sequence: reality, remedy, and result. The preachers, when preaching on anger, start with the situation or reality. They almost always admit in the sermon that anger exists but that anger is bad for a person's health. They then posit a solution in the sermon to the so-called problem of anger. In the article, this was called “the remedy” to the problem of anger. In these sermons it is always that those who experience anger should bring the anger to the liturgy and specifically express it through prayer in God's presence. In other words, liturgical rituals such as prayer and forms of lament should be utilized to dispose of anger, according to the preachers. In the last movement in these sermons, a promise is usually proclaimed, which is termed “the result” in the article. A person, who has recognized and acknowledged the so-called problem of anger and has then taken it in prayer and lament to the liturgy, may henceforth experience love, trust, respect, better communication, and more peace. ²

The preachers’ “reality, remedy, and result” paradigm was augmented with an emerging homiletical theory. ³ In the last round of coding, what is derived from the inductive coding process is developed by means of the literature into an emerging theory which can also be termed a theory of praxis in practical theology. The following emerging theory was suggested in the aforementioned article: first, that preachers move from preaching about anger as just a theme in a somewhat objective and detached fashion to angry preaching. That is to say, preachers should not only reflect on the topic of anger, but they should embody anger in their sermons. How a theme such as anger is embodied is part of the message of a sermon and the overarching communication event. What is thus needed is embodied angry preaching, which does not mean uncontrolled emotional communicative outbursts in the pulpit, but sermons preached after the body of the preacher delivering the sermon has listened on a deep level to anger. Thus, angry preaching is integrally connected to listening, which was the second theme of the emerging theory.

Second, angry preaching requires the capacity to listen to anger. This kind of preaching will ask much not only of the listeners to an angry sermon but also of the preachers delivering the sermon as well as worship planners and leaders. There is a noetic function in the experience of delivering an angry sermon and leading angry liturgies, as well as in listening to such a sermon and participating in such a liturgy. ⁴ Listening to anger, however, should be part of the whole liturgical and homiletical preparation process and not only of the celebration and preaching event.

Third, Wepener and Pieterse argued that angry preaching fits within an angry liturgy. Such a sermon should be embedded in an angry liturgy, as is also argued in this exploration. ⁵

This second article builds on Part 1 by developing this emerging theory that was originally presented in the article “Angry Preaching” in three brief paragraphs. ⁶ In what follows, angry preaching, angry liturgy, and angry listening are developed into a preliminary theory of liturgical and homiletical praxis based on a hermeneutic that takes seriously a listening God, a hermeneutic of Lordean rage, and the close relationship between liturgy and preaching.

2. Angry Preaching, Listening to Anger, and an Angry Hermeneutic

Writers who reflect on anger but who are not theologians also propose—and this is something seldom encountered in theological discussions of anger—the practice of listening to and hearing the anger of the other, which is an inescapable part of angry liturgy and preaching. ⁷

2.1 Listening to Anger

In the theological literature on anger and lament, there is often an important emphasis on God, who listens to the anger of the one expressing anger or lamenting. However, very seldom is there also an emphasis on people listening to one another's expressions of anger. In her book Sing the Rage: Listening to Anger after Mass Violence, Sonali Chakravarti emphasizes the importance of listening to anger and writes, “Listening is the praxis that connects anger with justice: without it, anger can only be catharsis or monologue, not constitutive of the process of justice.” ⁸ She continues that “Anger is not death; it is the opposite of death and affects those who listen to it that is not dependent on being able to respond but rather comes from its expression of the visceral human desire to survive and be heard.” ⁹

In this practical theological exploration of the embodiment of anger in worship and preaching, I am arguing that preachers, liturgists, and worshipers not only can and should get angry for the right reasons but also they should embrace this anger and embody it in the church, specifically in worship and preaching. In this regard, a critical question, before anger can find appropriate ritual forms of expression, is how we can hear anger and bring it into sermon and worship preparation, celebration, and delivery. This applies, for example, also to anger directed at me—a white, male, middle-class, previously privileged and often still privileged, South African. A lot of anger is directed at me in our day and age. By means of the practice of listening to anger, I have to face it before I can engage in, for example, delivering a sermon dealing with anger. ¹⁰ All preachers must ask themselves the critical question of whether they are prepared to hear this anger, as there will be some kind of anger that is directed at most people including them. ¹¹ Jakub Urbaniak writes, “There is no mature Christian theology today in South Africa that would be capable of revolutionizing people's love while patiently listening to and being shaped by people's rage.” ¹²

We should challenge our anger and the anger of other people and not work with it uncritically, as was argued at the end of Part 1 on the theme. According to Cherry, men are often allowed to get angry which is usually acceptable because men's anger is supposedly emanating from rational grounds and is logically well-motivated. ¹³ When women get angry, according to Cherry, they are viewed as being moody and irrational. Such serious gender biases should be challenged when it comes to the expression and hearing of anger. Society's perception of anger depends, of course, on who is expressing the emotion. And who is expressing it influences the way people are prepared to hear it. Cherry also refers to “white empathy” and “white skepticism” when it comes to hearing anger. She adds that society often demands more evidence from women and people of color than it does from men and white people. Liturgical practices, including preaching, can make a difference in this regard by means of actively engaging in listening to anger as a part of worship and sermon preparation.

In defining preaching, many homileticians identify and then discuss what they see as the main components of preaching. For example, Thomas Long identifies the congregation or assembly, the preacher, the sermon, and the presence of Christ. ¹⁴ South African homiletician Johan Cilliers has written beautifully on four elements of preaching: ¹⁵ Christ crucified and risen, the Bible, the congregation, and the preacher, and calls these the four voices of preaching. ¹⁶ The aim of preaching, according to Cilliers, is to bring these four voices together in a meaningful and harmonious way. In his latest book on homiletics, he explores this aspect of preaching again and calls the book Timing Grace. Preaching is grace when the timing is done in a meaningful way, which is akin to the idea of the four voices that come together harmoniously in the event of preaching. ¹⁷

This exploratory article appreciates Cilliers's oeuvre and insight into preaching and temporality. While it builds on his work, however, it also bends it just a little bit, aiming at a temporary interruption of all the voices of preaching. Cilliers uses the meaningful word voices for the four elements of preaching, explaining that the text speaks, God (Christ, the Gospel) speaks, the congregation speaks, and the preacher speaks. ¹⁸ This is an apt definition of a Christian practice such as preaching that rests so heavily on the auditory sense. It becomes problematic, however, when it comes to the theme of anger in general and angry preaching in particular. All people—those who are angry and those who are not—are just speaking or are voices producing sound all the time. The question arises whether the focus is too much on voices that actively aim at being heard in the event of preaching, so much so that the practice of listening as part of the event of preaching may, in the end, be neglected. Sometimes, the voices of preaching, especially when it comes to angry preaching, should at least momentarily refrain from speaking and also listen. So much speaking is included in the event of preaching that little room remains for listening in the homiletical process. Maybe these voices of preaching can, at least for a while during the preparation of the sermons, be turned into listeners for preaching. ¹⁹ Regarding the absence of listening to anger, Urbaniak writes, “One has to ask, however, if the time (Kairos) has not come for South African theologians to listen more carefully to, and allow themselves to be informed by, the angry voices of those who feel that the post-apartheid socioeconomic system has failed them and betrayed them.” ²⁰

In Sunday's Sermon for Monday's World, Sally Brown, in commenting on the missional church and the role of preaching, writes, “As Christianity all over the globe becomes less white and less mainline, the missional initiative will need to broaden its scope. The future is likely to be less preaching and more listening.” ²¹ This listening stance can also be termed a “spirituality of liminality” that needs to be embraced in the whole homiletical and liturgical process of preparation, delivery, and celebration. ²²

Nicolas Wolterstorff, on his part, writes in The God We Worship, “Just as it often happens that one person is not on speaking terms with another, so too it sometimes happens that one person is not on listening terms with another.” ²³ Preachers are sometimes also not on listening terms with their contexts and texts. Deep listening to both preaching texts and the context, especially when the sounds are rather challenging, such as the sound of anger, can be a challenge to preachers and worship leaders. In several chapters, Wolterstorff discusses a God who listens and hears. According to him, worshipers address God, aiming their address at God, who listens, while expecting a favorable response. He writes, “If God does in fact listen, then there is a reciprocity of orientation: we are orientated toward God in addressing God and God is orientated toward us in listening. This reciprocity of orientation brings into existence an I-thou relationship between God and us. God is a thou for us.” ²⁴ Not only speaking but also listening belongs to the core of liturgy and worship. This aspect of listening, however, is sometimes neglected. Wolterstorff calls this “the understanding of God that is mostly passive and fundamental in the traditional liturgies is that of God who as one who can and does listen to us and is capable of responding favorably to what we say.” ²⁵ The fact that God listens, however, does not mean that God can be manipulated into listening and remains free to listen or not.

According to Wolterstorff, “The suffering of the world is also an epiphany of God—sometimes of the anger of God, sometimes of the gift of God, but always, I suggest, of the suffering of God.” ²⁶ In listening to anger in liturgy and preaching, preachers and hearers thus listen not only to fellow worshipers but also to the suffering and anger of God. The sound of anger can also be heard outside of worship in the public square and in private domains.

The need for hearing anger as imperative for angry liturgy and preaching can be theologically grounded in a God who listens. God speaks. God is a voice in preaching, as Cilliers puts it, but the Christian God is also a God who listens to the expression of anger. If it is part of the task of the preacher and worship leader to help the hearers to see the world from a godly perspective, then sometimes the preacher should actively look for and listen to anger in the world, God's anger, and human anger, so that a preacher can make it audible in the pulpit.

In the liturgy and homiletics modules I teach, I sometimes ask students to take a photograph of a sign of God's presence in Stellenbosch. This is not an unknown practice in liturgical and homiletical pedagogy, especially pertaining to an aesthetic approach and teaching preaching as an act of seeing, reframing, re-imagining, interruption, and disruption as an integral aspect of postcolonial homiletics. ²⁷ Recently, after we performed this exercise with the photographs, one student returned with a photograph of a sanitary-pad dispenser from the women's bathroom in our faculty building. Another student brought a photograph of a little plant growing in a crack in the steps at the main entrance of the building. Yet another was very honest and took no photographs. And one international student, who is far from his family in Europe, took a photograph of his classmates.

On a very practical, creative level, given the theme of angry liturgy and preaching, worship leaders and preachers will do well, as part of sermon preparation, to take out their cell phones before the Sunday morning service and take photographs of signs of anger in their midst and ask whether these also could be signs of God's anger. As a practical exercise, this can be an exercise to actively look for and find signs of anger and, as such, maybe also signs of God. God's anger is a sign of a listening God. Brueggemann calls an angry God a God who noticed: “An angry God remembers to be a God who cares about the beloved partner” and “The indignant judge is yet the pitiful mother and the grieving father.” ²⁸ A listening God is a God who listens to the plight of suffering. Seeking out an angry God in our midst can be an early and important step in the whole liturgical and homiletical process that leads up to the embodiment of angry preaching in the pulpit and the celebration of an angry liturgy. Such listening should be a deliberate act by the worship leader, preacher, and all involved in worship preparation, namely, to listen to an angry God and, as such, to develop a sensitivity to deep listening, which includes listening to the sound of anger in a particular context. Deep listening to both context and text is essential before any meaningful preaching and worship can follow.

Milan Kundera wrote in Slowness that when people try to forget, they move faster. When they try to remember, they move slower. ²⁹ There is a connection between bodily movement and the attentiveness of someone's mind. Bodily movement is connected not only to remembering and forgetting but also to the experience of emotions. Cherry writes in The Case for Rage that fear makes people run away from a situation: “In other words, those who are angry—compared to those who are fearful—are more prone to make risk-seeking choices.” ³⁰ Anger makes people run toward the situation and not away. Lordean anger assists people in running toward an injustice, which is a step toward courage and an act of hope. However, people often run away from the sound of anger not towards it, as they are not prepared to stop and actively engage in listening to anger.

When it comes to listening to the sound of anger in the homiletical process of sermon preparation, the act of listening can assist preachers in running toward a text and context and, thus, facing the anger and the reasons behind the anger instead of running away from a certain text or a specific context. Preachers and worship leaders will, like most people, in an almost default position, resist this kind of listening. An attitude or spirituality that includes a willingness to engage in this kind of listening that can embrace rage is imperative for angry liturgy and preaching. The biblical text with which the first part (of this two-part article) started, Judges 19, is one example of a biblical text that worship leaders and preachers will sometimes rather run away from than toward.

In 1999, shortly after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa, I was a minister in the countryside. A group of ministers and church elders from the local Dutch Reformed congregations (all of us white) went to pay a conciliatory visit to our brothers in the Uniting Reformed congregations (all black). We visited them in a spirit of reconciliation, with the images of Bishop Tutu embracing white people fresh in our memories. When we arrived at the location where the meeting was to take place, we were cordially invited into the church hall. At that time, it was our custom, as white ministers, simply to take control of the situation immediately, even to determine the agenda and to start addressing the meeting straight away. And that was what we tried to do there as well. A specific black minister immediately silenced us, told us to go and sit down, and began screaming at us in anger. It was an outburst of rage directed at the white visitors. This was a very traumatic experience for me and probably also for some of my colleagues. The black minister shared in this outburst what he had to endure during the apartheid years, with the implication that we, as white ministers, were not without a measure of responsibility for what he and other people had experienced.

There were many responses to that expression of anger we experienced that day which related to white ignorance, white skepticism, and white empathy, as Cherry refers to such reactions of white people to black anger in her book. ³¹ It would have been possible to ignore our black colleague's expression of anger, as he made us uncomfortable and interrupted and disrupted our worlds. (Unpleasant) experiences such as this one, however, are critical for a meaningful engagement with anger in the pulpit and in worship. To engage in angry preaching and worship, the critical question remains as to how a preacher and worship leader can refrain from the almost default position of immediately being a so-called voice in the event of preaching and actively listen to anger and incorporate that experience into the preaching and liturgy preparation before it is expressed in sermon delivery and worship celebration. Active listening to anger is one part of the answer which builds on the suggested theological foundation of a listening God, which results in a specific hermeneutic. The theological starting point in which part of God's ongoing story with humanity is also to be seen in expressions of both divine rage and human rage is imperative. Both God's holy rage and humans’ Lordean rage are expressions of caring about injustice. It takes courage, however, to listen to anger, and loving involvement to be prepared to listen to and hear the sounds of rage, which in turn calls for a specific hermeneutic.

2.2 An Angry Hermeneutic

Practical theologian Alastair Campbell writes that “we must use the power of our anger to insist upon a true meeting, … like the covenant God who will not relinquish His beloved,” which, according to Campbell, “is anger that does not seek destruction, but love.” ³² The point is that the sound of anger and lament is usually very unpleasant, which means that listening to expressions of that anger and lament will be extremely challenging for worshipers. Wolterstorff writes with regard to the incorporation of lament in the liturgy that “lament does not market well.” ³³ This is true, but it is even more so the case with listening to and hearing anger in liturgy—it does not market well at all. This emphasizes the need for a specific hermeneutic for angry liturgy and preaching.

Preachers and worship leaders approach biblical texts and their contexts with a particular hermeneutical approach, for example, a hermeneutic of a preferential option for the poor from liberation theology or a reformed theological hermeneutic of covenantal promise and hope. When it comes to angry preaching and liturgy that takes listening to anger seriously, it will be necessary at times to approach texts and contexts with a hermeneutic of Lordean rage and God's holy anger. Listening to anger for a preacher and worship leader will entail a hermeneutic of Lordean rage, which encompasses both realism and possibility. Realism in this hermeneutical approach will entail active and deep listening to anger and, by means of this kind of reading and listening, will attempt to discern what the reality of the anger in the biblical text(s) and context entails. This hermeneutical approach entails preachers and worship leaders simultaneously listening to God's anger in the biblical text(s) and context and, as such, exploring what could be.

This kind of hermeneutic entails a particular kind of discerning listening. It requires a theological conviction that God is already at work in the world. It requires worship leaders and preachers to discern where this movement is and to join in. ³⁴ Deliberately attending to anger can help with this kind of discernment and in joining the movement. This is a kind of listening that works with a hermeneutic that will push some preachers and worship leaders to listen attentively in places where they otherwise would maybe only have heard noise and chaos. It can move preachers to engage in texts such as Judges 19 and other texts of terror in the pulpit. ³⁵ When this happens, worship leaders and preachers working with a hermeneutic of God's Lordean rage become agents of divine interruption. ³⁶ This aim is related to Sally Brown's purpose in her recent book entitled Sunday's Sermon for Monday's World, in which she explores the question of how preaching helps “believers discern, and, with imaginative courage, participate in the ongoing, redemptive activity of God in the ordinary settings of their everyday lives….” ³⁷

Protest marches in South Africa can serve as an example of such an unlikely place for angry listening and a hermeneutic of God's Lordean rage. A choice can be made not to see protesters and not hear them, even though they are everywhere and loud. I can also decide, however, to listen to them and actively engage in their expression of anger in the public square. ³⁸ To deliberately listen to these unpleasant sounds of anger with such a hermeneutic can give birth to angry preaching and worship that interrupts and disrupts.

An important point on angry listening for preaching has to do with what Cherry calls uptake in relation to listening to anger. This is important to consider with regard to a hermeneutic that can engage anger. ³⁹ Cherry accents that there are many reasons people resist listening to anger, and these reasons should be flagged. All preachers interpret the world through their own subjectivity. It is, therefore, very important to challenge preconceived ideas and ways in which we listen. An example that Cherry discusses is what she calls “himpathy,” namely being especially empathetic to the motives of rich and powerful white men. ⁴⁰ Cherry writes in several places in her book that when a woman is angry, she is emotional and unstable, and men will wait until she calms down. ⁴¹ When a man is angry, people usually will listen, as there would obviously be some good rational explanation for his anger. This kind of resistance and selective listening to the anger of women is highly problematic and suggests that preachers should actively work to undermine these listening filters with which they listen to anger. Often listeners to anger also demand a lot more evidence from black people to motivate their anger than they do from white people. This issue of uptake underscores the need for a specific hermeneutic to aid listening and discernment that can undergird angry preaching and worship.

It is important to ensure that this kind of angry preaching and worship is a form of amplification and not appropriation. Cherry devotes a whole chapter to this issue. ⁴² In angry liturgy and preaching, the aim is to amplify the rage felt by people who are not free and not to appropriate their rage as the rage of worshipers and worship leaders. The preacher's anger is not the same as the anger felt by those who are oppressed. Cherry writes: “Feeling Lordean rage in response to injustice is not the same as feeling what the oppressed feels—it is not the same as feeling the emotions that arise due to and as a result of the rage, such as vulnerability, victimization, and pain.” ⁴³ To appropriate the rage of oppressed people is akin to cultural appropriation. The appropriation of someone else's anger or pain can be a form of colonization of people's emotions. ⁴⁴ There are practices that can be consciously incorporated into liturgy and sermon preparation that can assist in this regard.

2.3 Practices and Strategies

John S. McClure's Round-table Pulpit concept entails that the preacher, in the course of a week and while preparing a sermon, gets the opportunity to listen to a variety of people, especially how they hear and understand the text(s) that will be used for preaching. ⁴⁵ McClure's concepts can be valuable for angry preaching and worship preparation; when expanded, they can create the vision to actively create courageous listening spaces for preachers and worship leaders when, from time to time, they are immersed in spaces where they are exposed to anger and challenged on their selective uptake of anger.

In addition to an angry round-table pulpit, the practice of role-playing texts as part of sermon preparation is familiar in homiletics. Biblical texts can, in the light of angry preaching, be used for role-playing, but specifically with a hermeneutic of God's Lordean rage. As such, the characters in a story can be explored by means of questions such as who is angry in the text, who should be angry, what lies behind the (potential) anger, what kind of anger are they experiencing, should we as readers of the text be angry when we read the text and, if yes, why should we be angry? An exercise like role-playing with this hermeneutic will further develop the idea of angry listening for preaching and embrace an “empathetic imagination,” the aim of which McClure describes as being able “to relate the gospel to the lived experiences of listeners.” ⁴⁶ Hennie Pieterse developed this idea further in a South African context of poverty, proposing that preachers immerse themselves on different levels in a context of poverty as part of preaching preparation. ⁴⁷

To develop an empathetic imagination means acquiring the wisdom that is also present throughout the development of the plot of a text, such as Judges 19, and wearing the skin of some of the characters in that story and walking around in it. Preachers and worship leaders who engage in the preparation of angry preaching and worship will do well by being open to walking around in the skin of biblical characters, the skin of the listeners, and their own skins. In this regard, the skin of angry people should receive special emphasis. And then—and here is the point which many will resist—preachers and worship leaders should embody what they experienced in their own skins and the skins of others in sermon delivery and leading worship.

Preachers and worship leaders should thus, based on this empathetic imagination and listening to anger in both text and context, deliver an embodied angry sermon and lead angry worship. This will entail, for example, that a preacher should not preach an angry sermon in a disengaged fashion. The anger should thus be embodied and performed. Many preachers and listeners will resist this idea. However, an angry sermon can assist the hearers in developing empathetic imaginations on their side. When preachers stand in the pulpit as if they are completely unmoved by the reasons people experience Lordean rage, the way in which that sermon is performed or delivered is a sermon as a bodily communicative event. Then a preacher's preaching actions and emotions, or precisely the absence thereof, speak a lot louder than the words of the sermon. ⁴⁸ Preachers and worship leaders, however, cannot engage in this kind of angry preaching and worship if they are not completely involved in the motivation behind this angry sermon and worship. And the motivation is love, God's love, and the search for justice, which means that in the spirit of Audre Lorde, preachers, worship leaders, listeners, and worshipers are free only when everyone is free. ⁴⁹

What exactly is meant by the delivery of an angry sermon and leading angry worship can easily be misunderstood. It does not (necessarily) entail over-emphasized dramatic acting in the pulpit, which might include actions such as jumping and shouting and exhibiting certain facial expressions. The delivery of an angry sermon will entail a different performance of the sermon for every individual preacher, depending on many variables. By way of analogy, a liturgist cannot break bread at the Lord's table the Sunday after a violent gang rape had occurred in her town or when the sermon is based on Judges 19, in the same way that she broke bread the previous week. ⁵⁰ There should be a difference in the performance that is informed by the preceding week's preparation for preaching and leading worship which was informed by a specific hermeneutic that assisted with listening to anger. Worshipers should be able to experience that the bread the liturgist is breaking is shouting out in agony and in anger.

Performing anger and, thus, delivering an angry sermon is closely related to sermon form. Thomas Long popularized the idea that texts say and do things, and that sermons also should both say and do things. ⁵¹ Texts should thus not only convey an idea, but they should also attempt to do something to the hearers, which should be embedded in the content and form of the sermon. Long uses the concepts of focus (what the text says) and function (what the text wants to do) in this regard. ⁵² For both focus and function, certain forms can be more or less appropriate. Leonora Tisdale is one of the homileticians who have developed this idea further. In her book Prophetic Preaching: A Pastoral Approach, she discusses various sermon forms suitable for prophetic preaching. ⁵³ Suitable sermon forms for angry sermons can be explored in light of Tisdale's work. She works within a prophetic paradigm with a pastoral approach, which is imperative for any liturgical engagement with anger. Most of Tisdale's forms can work, and three are presented here as examples.

“Invitation to dialogue” is the first example; it is a sermon form in which the angry sermon of one specific preacher is not the last word on the topic but rather the opening of an ongoing conversation. ⁵⁴ This conversation can happen in many ways and places, for example, in the worship service, in a courageous conversation after the worship service where the angry sermon was delivered, via emails, and other ongoing communication platforms. A second option for the form of an angry sermon is what Tisdale calls an “invitation to lament,” and that lament form of the angry sermon is then also embraced in the rest of the liturgy. ⁵⁵ Third, the well-known formal sequence of “problem—resolution—new possibility” will suit angry preaching as well as it will assist with reframing, which is characteristic of how anger can also help someone, according to Campbell. ⁵⁶ He writes: “Anger often can reflect the human capacity to transcend the immediate situation, gain new perspective and effect a change for the better.” ⁵⁷

Sally Brown also provides advice that can be applied to angry preaching. ⁵⁸ Brown argues that preachers should assist hearers in imagining emancipatory scenarios. She argues that preachers should think again about sermon illustrations and prefers very specific ordinary everyday scenarios as illustrations rather than generalizations. On a practical level, this means that preachers include sermon illustrations in which hearers can imagine the anger and simultaneously imagine meaningful responses to oppressive scenarios, but specifically within their ordinary daily contexts from Monday to Saturday. Brown argues that this can assist hearers with faithful improvisation in everyday spaces, and she is opposed to presenting a “to-do” list at the end of a sermon. ⁵⁹ Instead, vivid, realistic acts of imagination inspired by the tactics of the weak can, according to Brown, be employed profitably in sermons. In angry preaching, hearers should be allowed to imaginatively rehearse a course of action in the everyday realm related to Lordean rage.

Tisdale writes about strategies for prophetic preaching, which are also applicable to angry preaching as a kind of prophetic preaching. ⁶⁰ Her list of ten such strategies starts with speaking truth in love, which means that especially the angriest of sermons may be preached only when preachers can positively say they love the hearers. Tisdale then moves through strategies such as standing with the hearers over and against texts indicting both preacher and hearers, rather than siding with the text over against the hearers, and ends her list with the advice to take the long view. Preachers of angry sermons will not change the world by means of one angry sermon, so angry preaching should be part of a larger ministerial strategy. Tisdale's strategies for preaching are also applicable to angry worship.

2.4 Angry Liturgy

An angry sermon cannot stand alone. It must be embedded in an angry liturgy. Following Cláudio Carvalhaes and his approach to postcolonial liturgy, an angry liturgy is an act of praying in “with-ness.” ⁶¹ Carvalhaes argues that those who pray in the liturgy are constantly reorientated in the world and that prayer, or participation in the liturgy, influences the way in which people look at the world. For him, it is critical to worship in solidarity with the pain in the world, which is exactly the texts and contexts within which angry preaching is birthed and the contexts at which it is directed. Thus, angry worship can have a potential influence in assisting people in praying in with-ness with those suffering injustice and thus in solidarity with the people. Angry preaching can, as such, also open eyes through prayer to injustice and oppression. Carvalhaes argues that the liturgical adage lex orandi lex credendi lex vivendi should not be thought of in a linear fashion as always starting with the law of prayer (lex orandi) and that liturgists will do well to start with lex vivendi, the lived experience of everyday, and only from there move to lex orandi. ⁶² In his view of postcolonial liturgy that is performed in with-ness with the pain of the world, a simultaneity of lex-orandi-credendi-vivendi prevails. This view is akin to Sally Brown's homiletical argument explored above, in which she tries to foster a closer connection between Sunday's sermon and Monday's world. Carvalhaes writes, “That is why praying is such a troubling act: because we act and are acted upon, word and performance giving shape to my soul, marking my body, disturbing my mind, moving my emotions, challenging my allegiances, changing my faith, reinventing my life.” ⁶³

An angry liturgy should be able to assist worshipers, on the one hand, to express their own anger, but also, and importantly, to assist worshipers in experiencing and hearing the anger of others. ⁶⁴ Such hearing of the anger of others within the context of liturgy can assist with praying in with-ness.

On a very practical level, I suggest that anger should not be restricted to certain aspects of the liturgy, for example, preaching and prayers. A hermeneutic of Lordean rage can assist worship planners in developing any liturgical ritual in a worship service by means of this hermeneutic. An extract from the well-known benediction attributed to St. Francis of Assisi can serve as an example: “May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.”

3. Conclusion

In this second article on the theme of angry liturgy and preaching, suggestions were offered on how preachers and worship leaders can enrich their sermons, worship preparation, delivery, and celebration in order to embody anger encountered in both texts and contexts. In this regard, the importance of listening to anger and a hermeneutic of God's Lordean rage, as well as certain practices and strategies, were explored. Together, Parts 1 and 2 provide a general exploration of, as well as a preliminary theory of, liturgical and homiletical praxis for angry worship and preaching.

Angry preaching and worship birthed from listening to anger and a hermeneutic of God's Lordean rage point towards the indicative of a loving God who becomes infuriated at injustice; the imperative of how preachers, worship leaders, hearers, and worshipers can act amid challenging circumstances; and the indicative and imperative combine into a subjunctive of simultaneously seeing what is and what is possible. Hence holy anger and Lordean rage stimulate a prophetic imagination, even and especially in the (con)texts of gang rapes and murders.