Jonah 3:10-4:11, Matthew 20:1-16
16th Sunday after Pentecost Lectionary 25
What makes you angry? Do you lose your patience with impatient people? Are you intolerant of intolerance? What makes you angry? I floated this question on FaceBook, and there were a variety of answers. I had thought most of them would be political, but that was not the case. It turns out that people are really aggravated by how other people drive! Being ignored or underestimated, ignorance and stupidity are difficult for some. Several people said that people who hurt or abuse animals or people sparked their anger. In fact, one woman said she wanted to beat up people who hurt others.
The prophet Jonah was an angry prophet. Most people know that Jonah was swallowed up by a whale. The whole story is much better than that. God had sent Jonah to preach repentance to the Ninevites, residents of the Assyrian capital. Assyrians were a people known for their acts of violence and cruelty. They were Israel’s enemy, and Jonah did not want to go into the heart of enemy territory. Ninevah was west. He ran away, 750 miles or so east, not just to escape this mission, but to escape God.
In case you have not experienced this yourself, you cannot outrun God. God has a way of persuading people to do things they never imagined they would, or even could, do. In Jonah’s case, God’s convincing involved a storm and a whale. Arriving in Ninevah, Jonah preached a sermon that every church-going person would like their pastor to preach. It was 8 words long. “Forty days more, and Ninevah shall be overthrown.” Every preacher prays for their sermon to be this effective! The people of Ninevah believed God’s words spoken through this prophet. Like all good sermons, this word spread across the city. When the king heard it, he declared that all people and all cows and goats and dogs and cats,—especially the cats,– were to repent.[1] He ordered them to give up their evil ways, and they did. And God changed God’s mind, and did not destroy the Ninevites.
Jonah’s face got red, he stopped breathing for a minute, and said, in his most sarcastic voice, “I knew you are gracious, and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” Then he stomped his foot, and shouted, “Lord, just take me now!” God looked at him sideways and asked, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Jonah did not answer God, and, instead of doing the happy dance because his preaching was successful, Jonah stomped off to pout.
“Is it right for you to be angry?” Perhaps Jonah would not be so angry if God’s mercy had been given to someone other than Israel’s enemy. Assyria will soon come to be the empire that destroys the northern kingdom of Israel. Isn’t it right to be angry that God’s forgiveness extends to these violent Assyrians? Aren’t people supposed to get what they deserve? Isn’t it right to be angry when bad people are not punished?
God, in God’s way, offers Jonah an object lesson. He grew a bush so that it gave the prophet shade from the heat of the sun. Jonah was happy about the bush. The next morning, God arranged for a worm to attack the bush so it withered. Once more, he asked that he might die. “’Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?’” And he said, ‘Yes, angry enough to die.’”
Frederick Buechner defines anger in this way:
Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.[2]
Anger can be used in productive ways, especially when it motivates us to challenge discrimination, or to help the poor and those who are suffering. But Jonah’s anger was based on his judgment, not God’s. Jonah made himself the determiner of who deserved forgiveness and who did not. And then Jonah took his anger, and turned it inward, so that he wanted to die.
Every person in Ninevah may have done evil things, but they were God’s people. The bush and the worm were God’s, too. When the people turned back to him, when they repented, he had compassion on them. He saw them as people “who did not know their right hand from their left,” people who were lost and broken. God prefers second chances instead of punishment, and rehabilitation to revenge. Does God’s generosity make you angry?
It did for the laborers in the field who were hired first. The landowner in our parable hires laborers in the early hours of the morning, at 9, at noon, and at 3 in the afternoon. Then he hired more just one hour before quitting time. He not only paid everyone the same amount for the whole day, he made certain the worker hired first saw the people who only worked an hour get the same paycheck they were promised. They were angry, and said, “You have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”
The landowner fulfilled the agreement he had with those who were hired first. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” We are reminded of the bush God gave to Jonah. The landowner asks, “Are you envious because I am generous?” The Greek literally translates, ““Is your eye evil because I am good?”
“Is it right for you to be angry?” “Is your eye evil because I am good?” From the time we recognize ourselves as distinct human beings, we appoint ourselves as judge of what is fair and what is not. “He got cookies than me! It’s not fair!” We do it as adults, too, only in a more mature way, of course. Sometimes. How strange and even offensive it is, to our way of thinking, that the last shall be first. How we receive that news perhaps depends on where we stand in the line.
Remarkably enough, God did not desert Jonah in his disobedience, or even give him up to his own poor choices. God, as the landowner, went out over and over, all day long to find people who needed to work, and he hired them to work in the vineyard. God does not give up on those who are in need of grace and mercy. God does not give up on us.
~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin
[1] As you may already know, I really do like cats.
[2] Buechner, Frederick. Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004. 18.