2026.02.08 | Cold Anger

“Cold Anger”
Proverbs 29:11
Ecclesiastes 7:8–9
Ephesians 4:25-27

Preached by 
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser

Eden United Church of Christ  
Cherryland, CA 
08 February 2026

Good morning, Church, and happy Bad Bunny Day to all who celebrate. I’m guessing most of us know what anger feels like. There are the everyday sparks: a pestering sibling, someone cutting us off in traffic, our team losing on a bad call. Those are acute bursts—anger that flares up quickly and often fades just as fast.

But then there’s another kind of anger. The kind that doesn’t dissipate. The kind that settles in the body. The kind that builds.

I don’t have to guess too hard to know there’s some chronic anger out there right now. Things are stacking up. For some of us, it was a meme posted by the President last week. For others, it’s something far closer to home. Either way, the pressure is real.

And here’s the first thing we need to say clearly: anger is not bad.

Anger has gotten a bad reputation in the church. We’re often taught to suppress it, spiritualize it away, or pray it into silence. But Scripture tells a more honest story.

Proverbs says, “A fool gives full vent to anger, but the wise quietly hold it back.” Not eliminate it. Not deny it. Hold it. Shape it. Steward it.

Ecclesiastes presses even further: “Do not be quick to anger, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.” Quick anger burns hot, loud, and fast. It flares, consumes, and, if untended, leaves little behind but ash. No doubt we’ve experienced this.

And then Paul, writing to the church in Ephesus, dares to say something startling: “Be angry, but do not sin.” Anger itself is not the problem. What we do with it is.

Ernesto Cortés Jr., Industrial Areas Foundation organizer and MacArthur Genius Grantee, gives us language for this kind of faithful anger. He calls it cold anger, anger cooled enough to be useful, disciplined enough to endure, relational enough to lead to real change. Mary Beth Rogers, chronicles his organizing approach, patterned from Moses himself, in Cold Anger: A Story of Faith and Power Politics. (1) 

Cold anger is not explosive. It does not shout to be seen. It burns blue, like a steady flame—hot enough to forge, not destroy. Blue flame signifies efficient utilization of fuel and can be wielded like a scalpel, controlled for good. And this matters deeply right now.

So much of what we are witnessing in public life—especially in the actions of ICE—reveals how anger has been socialized, particularly among men, to erupt as domination, force, and spectacle.

That is orange-flame anger: flashy, violent, consuming everything in its path. It mistakes power for force. Control for strength. Fear for authority.

What we are watching unfold is a tale of two masculinities.

One masculinity has been taught that anger proves manhood when it explodes outward—through intimidation, punishment, and cruelty. Some of us have been on the receiving end of this. Some of us were socialized to impart this. 

The other masculinity, the one Scripture quietly commends, knows how to hold anger long enough to turn it toward justice. To let it illuminate what is wrong. To organize, protect, and repair. There’s a tenderness that can come with tending anger, as we saw with Alex Pretti. 

We see this tale play out on the national stage, and it's coming to a head today in Santa Clara: One masculinity cages bodies, the other frees expression; one brandishes a gun, the other a microphone.

La ira es algo que todos conocemos. A veces surge en arrebatos rápidos y desaparece con la misma rapidez, pero otras veces se instala y crece con el tiempo. Este tipo de ira está muy presente en la actualidad. La iglesia a menudo nos enseña a reprimir la ira, pero las Escrituras cuentan una historia diferente. Proverbios y Eclesiastés advierten contra la ira explosiva e incontrolada, mientras que Pablo nos recuerda: «Enójense, pero no pequen». La ira en sí misma no es el problema, sino lo que hacemos con ella.

Ernie Cortés llama a la ira fiel, ira serena o el enojo frío: una ira lo suficientemente disciplinada como para perdurar, lo suficientemente relacional como para generar cambios y lo suficientemente constante como para ser útil. La ira serena arde como una llama azul: enfocada, precisa y constructiva. Esto contrasta con la ira explosiva que a menudo vemos en la vida pública, especialmente en sistemas como el ICE, donde la ira se expresa a través de la dominación y la fuerza. Lo que presenciamos es una historia de dos masculinidades: una que encarcela cuerpos y empuña armas, y otra —afirmada por las Escrituras— que maneja la ira con cuidado y la dirige hacia la justicia, la protección y la liberación.

Cold anger does not disappear overnight. Paul says, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” That doesn’t mean the fire goes out by sunset. Sometimes the sun doesn’t go down on it because the fire still needs to burn—not as rage, which can lead to sin, but as righteous indignation, steady enough to reveal injustice and durable enough to change it.

Mary Beth Rogers, in her book Cold Anger, tells the story of Mary Moreno, a daughter of a migrant working family from the Rio Grande Valley. Mary learned early what powerlessness feels like. When her father was killed by police, her world shattered. She had no access, no influence, no voice; no one in authority seemed willing to hear. Her anger boiled like a cauldron—hot, raw, consuming—because it had nowhere to go. At first, she had no power, only pain. But that anger did not disappear.

Through churches organizing for social change, Mary discovered something transformative: she was not alone. In those relational spaces, her private grief became shared truth. Her anger cooled just enough to become useful. What once threatened to destroy her was disciplined into resolve.

Mary’s story reminds us that anger does not become dangerous because it exists, but because it is isolated. When held in community and aimed at justice, anger becomes a source of power—not for revenge, but for repair.

This is where the church must remember something essential. We all know the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But organizers, like Ernie, also speak of the Iron Rule: never do for others what they can do for themselves.

Anger rightly held should never lead to dependency. It should lead to empowerment. And that’s what we’re about here at Eden Church, and the Eden Power Collective. 

Organizing is just a fancy way of saying accountable relationship-building. If I’m an organizer, I’m not trying to sell you an idea. I’m trying to learn your story. What are your interests? What are your dreams? What makes you angry? 

Because anger gives you energy. Ernie Cortes taught that. And the clergy he organized in the 70s through the 90s called that energy the Holy Spirit at work—that inner stirring that refuses to accept the world as it is.

Community organizer and political theorist Saul Alinsky, founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation, which Ernie came to lead, once said the goal of agitation is not to make people angry for anger’s sake, but to make them angry enough about the state of their lives to take action. Not venting—but building. Not brute power, but relational power. Power rooted in people who know one another, trust one another, and are willing to act together.

And we need that kind of anger now. For we need that kind of power. But it’s not all about anger. It’s also about what and who we love, for as theologian Paul Tillich reminds us, power and love have to be joined for us to have justice. (2)

La ira contenida no desaparece de la noche a la mañana. Cuando Pablo dice: «No dejen que el sol se ponga sobre su enojo», no se refiere a que la ira deba extinguirse, sino a que debe ser canalizada, ardiendo no como rabia, sino como indignación justa, lo suficientemente fuerte como para denunciar la injusticia y lo suficientemente firme como para transformarla. Mary Beth Rogers cuenta la historia de Mary Moreno, hija de una familia de trabajadores migrantes cuyo padre fue asesinado por la policía. Al principio, su ira no tenía salida. A través de las iglesias que se organizaban para el cambio social, descubrió que no estaba sola, y su dolor aislado se convirtió en fuerza compartida. Su historia nos enseña que la ira se vuelve peligrosa cuando se aísla, pero se convierte en fuente de vida cuando se comparte en comunidad.

Por eso la iglesia recuerda tanto la Regla de Oro como la Regla de Hierro: nunca hagas por los demás lo que ellos pueden hacer por sí mismos. La ira bien encauzada conduce al empoderamiento, no a la dependencia. Organizarse implica construir relaciones, escuchar las historias de las personas y lo que las enfurece, porque la ira genera energía. Como enseñaron Ernie Cortés y Saul Alinsky, el objetivo no es desahogarse, sino construir poder a través de las relaciones. Así que, si sientes ira, no la reprimas ni dejes que explote. Canalízala en comunidad. El mundo no necesita menos ira, sino una ira mejor: una ira que arda con intensidad, que genere poder y que transforme vidas.

In 2015, I had just moved from Berkeley to Dallas and I would soon find myself being trained in organizing by the Industrial Areas Foundation, having a scary lesson in power with Ernie himself, working with Faith in Action, Workers Defense Project, and Dallas Area Interfaith. In July of that year, Rodney Granillo, a 25-year-old flooring installer, was working in the Texas heat. He was used to fourteen-hour days, but that day the heat was brutal. He asked his boss for a rest break. He did not get one. Not long after, Rodney collapsed. At the hospital, his body temperature was 110 degrees. He did not make it home.

Can you imagine that devastation? Your son, your brother, your husband leaving for work and never returning? In Texas, a construction worker dies every three days. And the anger that comes when you learn the cause was completely preventable? 

That anger mattered. After Rodney’s death, the Dallas rest-breaks ordinance—long delayed—finally made it to the dais of City Hall. In January 2016, thanks to Rodney’s story, his family, and the relentless organizing of Workers Defense Project, under the leadership of Diana Ramírez, it passed, requiring a ten-minute rest break for every four hours of work. Anger gave the energy to protect lives.

But in 2023, the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act stripped cities of that authority, barring cities from enacting legislation stricter than the state. Worker protections erased with a pen stroke. So much for local autonomy. 

Does that make you angry? It should. Especially when 61 percent of construction workers in Texas are Latino, already viewed as expendable in the economy of the so-called “Texas Miracle.” Someone somewhere is always paying the price. La lucha sigue, and both anger and love fuel it. 

Beloved, if you are angry, don’t bury it. Neither let it explode. Channel it, in and with community. Say to yourself: I’m angry—and I’m going to turn this into something constructive. I’m going to volunteer at Comida Para Cherryland, I’m going to knit red hats, I’m going to learn songs of protest. 

You’ll soon hear about how to participate in Songs of Resistance & Good Trouble happening right here at Eden Church next month, because faith has always known how to turn anger into courage, lament into movement, and fire into light.

Church, the world does not need less anger. It needs better anger—anger that burns blue, anger that builds power, anger that changes lives for the better. And masculinities that are tender enough to tend blue flames. 

May God teach us how to steward the flame, melt oppression, and share the light. Amen.

(1) Mary Beth Rogers, Cold Anger: A Story of Faith and Power Politics (Denton: University of North Texas, 1990).
(2) Paul Tillich, Love, Power, and Justice: Ontological Analyses and Ethical Applications (Oxford: OUP, 1960).