I have to start out today with some honesty and vulnerability, and I can’t promise that I won’t cry. This week has been one of the most challenging in my ten years of ministry. I’m not so much grieving the loss of “my” candidate as I am the loss of my sense that what I do, both personally and professionally, matters. What good is a gospel of love and compassion if people choose not to listen? If words of hate and exclusion are acceptable, so long as they’re accompanied by promises of security and personal prosperity? It’s difficult to be a pastoral presence when your own heart is breaking. I’m grateful for all those who have given me the space to be human this week.
Preparation for worship this morning has been made even more difficult by how deeply I relate to Jonah in this moment. I fully recognize how unreasonable and, frankly, petty Jonah is being in this story, but it’s hard not to empathize with the words, “Jonah thought this was utterly wrong, and he became angry.” This just hits different on the Sunday after an election in which half of our nation feels not just disappointed, but betrayed. I acknowledge that this also means the other half of our country is feeling hopeful, perhaps even joyful at the results of this election. It’s honestly challenging for me to comprehend, but if that’s you, I want to name the validity of *your* feelings and tell you that I see you. My prayer is that in your joy, you also see those of us who are grieving, and that your joy is as much about how you believe others will benefit from these results as it is about your own interests.
But of course, these are all my personal feelings – “I, and not the Lord,” as Paul says in 1 Corinthians. While I maintain that it’s important for me to be open and honest with you about my humanity, that’s not my primary responsibility on Sunday mornings. So while it’s impossible for me to subtract my own feelings from the equation (me being, after all, 100% human and 0% robot) I’ll strive to find a message – and, dare I say, even Good News – in the Scripture reading for today.
We’ve all been hearing the story from Jonah chapter 1 since we were small – where the reluctant prophet runs away from God and winds up in the belly of a fish as a result. Most of us are also more or less familiar with chapter three, where Jonah finally answers God’s call and Ninevah repents. Even though mercy doesn’t necessarily seem to have been a part of God’s original plan, the Lord chooses to show mercy on the Ninevites anyway – after all, as Jonah himself acknowledges, the Lord is “a merciful and compassionate God.”
We tend to spend a lot less time with chapter four, though – the part of the book where the filter comes off and Jonah’s pettiness is turned up to eleven. Whereas I picture him as a sullen teenager in the first three chapters, by the last chapter, he seems to have completely regressed to a toddler throwing a full-blown temper tantrum. He says, “I KNEW this would happen, God; THIS is EXACTLY why I didn’t want to go to Ninevah! Now, you might as well kill me, because I’d rather DIE than watch you forgive these people!”
Obviously, this is a pretty extreme reaction. But before we let ourselves become too judgmental, let’s take a moment to remember what Ninevah represented to Jonah. Ninevah was a major city in Assyria, the powerful and cruel kingdom to the north of Israel. Although this story was obviously *set* in a time that the kingdom of Israel was still standing, it was most likely *written* a few centuries later – meaning that its authors would have known exactly how the relationship between the two nations would play out: in 720 BCE, the Assyrians invaded the Northern Kingdom of Israel and devastated it, taking many of its people into captivity and utterly destroying their way of life.
THIS was the people to whom God was calling Jonah. THIS was why Jonah reacted the way he did. THIS was why he was so angry. Can you imagine what it would feel like being asked to speak prophetically to those actively threatening you and your way of life?
Oops, I accidentally found myself back to relating to Jonah again. Hard to keep that humanness in check.
I’m sure this has more than a little to do with my own emotions surrounding this last week, and I own that, but today, I’m hearing this story’s message a lot differently than I usually do. I’ve always previously heard God’s response to Jonah in the last two verses as a judgment against Jonah’s anger (as I’m sure many of us do). But today, I’m wondering if there’s not more to it.
After all, anger isn’t a bad emotion in and of itself. As much as our culture often calls for “cooler heads to prevail” and instructs us not to let our emotions “get the better of us” (a criticism that ignores the reality of how our emotions affect us and has historically been levied most frequently against those with the most to lose), that’s not a biblically grounded position. Scripture never so much as implies that ANY emotion is bad. Godself becomes angry in the Bible, time and time again, so anger CAN’T be bad in and of itself.
In fact, although I’d never considered it before this week, who’s to say that God isn’t actually angry HERE, at the end of the book of Jonah? What if God isn’t gently chiding Jonah, after all, but railing against him? What if God is shouting so loudly that Jonah’s hair is blowing back, divine spittle flying in his face? What if this is less like the still, small voice that Elijah heard and more like God roaring at Job from out of the whirlwind? What if God is not just disappointed or frustrated here, but flat-out ANGRY?
It puts a different spin on God’s question to Jonah, doesn’t it? What if this question isn’t just about Jonah’s anger, but about Jonah’s anger in comparison to GOD’S? “Is YOUR anger good?” If there are TWO different types of anger on display here, and Jonah’s anger is (presumably) not good while God’s (presumably) is, then we have to figure out what it is that distinguishes between them, so that we can make sure, when we ourselves inevitably experience anger, that it falls into the latter category instead of the former.
God’s criticism of Jonah’s anger isn’t about the emotion itself – it’s about the reason BEHIND Jonah’s anger. And that reason is made crystal clear when God speaks in verse 10: “You have compassion for the shrub – can’t I have compassion for Ninevah?” The problem is that Jonah’s anger towards Ninevah is expressed AGAINST compassion for others. It’s in opposition to it. That’s why he doesn’t answer God the first time; he knows he’s wrong. God’s anger towards Jonah, on the other hand, is expressed on BEHALF of compassion for others – in service to it. THAT’S the only real difference.
God’s question to Jonah about whether or not his anger is good is a real question that we should also be seeking real answers to. When we experience anger, as we all do (and so many of us have this past week in particular), we need to make sure we’re doing the soul-searching necessary to determine what end our anger is serving. If we’re angry because someone has gotten something we want, or because someone has gotten something that we don’t believe they’ve earned or deserve, we need to take a deep breath and a step back. But if we’re angry because someone is suffering, or because someone is afraid for their life, or because someone needs help and isn’t getting it, then we need to lean into that and even stoke its fires. If we hold on to THAT anger, coupling it with a fierce, unapologetic love for others, then we will find ourselves able to do truly impossible things in the days, weeks, months, and even years to come.
Beloved, I have to be honest with you; I’m exhausted and afraid, as I know tens of millions of our fellow Americans are – many for even better reasons than mine. Frankly, I don’t much feel like being compassionate anymore. I don’t feel like I have it in me. I just want to rage and sit under a shrub and pout. But I have to ask myself, “Is *this* anger a good thing?” Is this sort of anger – a festering, selfish sort of anger – righteous? If not, I need to make a shift. But not one from anger to serenity; no, while this isn’t the time for cruelty, it’s not the time for passivity, either. I need to redirect my anger from a place that’s bitter and hateful to one that’s fiercely and deeply committed to the wellbeing of others. I need to embrace an anger that cannot tolerate intolerance, that cannot abide by anyone being left behind or lifted up above anyone else – one that exists out of love FOR human beings rather than against them.
Our God is the God of all people – and always has been; that hasn’t changed. We cannot forget that. But we also have a responsibility to preach a challenging, even confrontational Word to those who somehow don’t understand what God is really about. We can’t hide away in the belly of a fish or under a shrub on a hill and let our anger be the extent of our response to injustice and oppression. We have to let our anger fuel our proclamation of the Good News – Good News that CANNOT be defeated, no matter who is in office or how badly divided our nation becomes. Christ has conquered death itself; how can we be afraid to face whatever is to come, knowing that?
Our nation is badly in need of repentance – given how close the election actually was, there are clearly millions of people on both “sides” who are desperate to be shown a little compassion. If you’re not angry about so many people in the so-called “Greatest Country in the World” feeling like that, then why not? Now is the time to GET angry – on behalf of those afraid of war, afraid of hate, afraid of losing their homes, afraid of losing their lives, afraid that their country doesn’t care about them at all. If our collective anger burns brightly enough, it can be the thing that blazes a path and lights the way to a world more closely aligned with God’s kindom.
This repentance is likely more than the 40 days away that Jonah preached to Ninevah, but I have to believe that it will come. Not only because I trust that God’s mercy and compassion will ultimately have the final word, but because a part of me, no matter how scared or angry, continues stubbornly to believe the words of another prophet, speaking to us in the last days before her own world fell utterly apart: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”[1] May it be so. And may God use all of our good anger together to accomplish it. Amen.
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[1] From The Diary of Anne Frank.
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