Do you do well to be angry?

This week’s lectionary readings began with Jonah; to be specific, the end of his story. Taken all together, the four readings weave a portrait of the encounter of an angry man with a generous God. This fall, God has been generous, and I have been angry. So this was a helpful week. Here’s what I’ve learned, beginning with Jonah.

Jonah 3.10-4.11

Jonah is the “minor-est” of the minor prophets. He only has one line of prophecy: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3.4) But that’s not even a good prophecy, because it leaves out the conditional clause. Jonah knows that the LORD is “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” which he quotes from Exodus. (Jon. 4.2) So when Nineveh collectively asks “Who knows? God may … turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish,” (4.9) Jonah knew the answer. He ought to have said, “I know; He will,” as he did when the men on the boat asked “on whose account this evil has come upon us.” (1.8) Despite Jonah’s poor prophecy, Nineveh somehow encounters the Word of God, repents in faith, and finds salvation.

This angered Jonah, which God questions: “Do you do well to be angry?” (4.1, 4)

Jonah doesn’t answer the question, and God responds by giving Jonah a shade-plant that makes him manically glad (4.6) and takes it away the next morning. (4.7) Having just lost the shade of the plant, and oblivious to the salvation in Nineveh over which angels are rejoicing, Jonah concludes that it is better to die than to live. (4.8) This time when God asks, “Do you do well to be angry,” Jonah gives an answer: “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” (4.9) God reveals that this has been an analogical lesson—if Jonah is right to be angry when the plant plant he did not make, which only lasted one day, dies; God is more justified in his anger over the withering of the city of Nineveh. God did plant Nineveh; Nineveh is historically and geographically expansive; and its members bear his image. God is justifiably angry, but his anger moves him to generosity and pity.

And the book ends there.

Matthew 20.1-16

This week’s gospel reading is a parable. Scholars nearly universally agree it takes place in Phoenix because it features people complaining about working outside. The workers in the allegory stand for the people of God: people who work for varying amounts of time, with varying degrees of faithfulness and fervency and are all paid the same. People like Jonah. These are people who work not to build the city of Nineveh but that heavenly city “not built with human hands.” As did Paul and Apollos, these laborers “plant” and “water,” and God, the “vine-dresser,” tends and gives it growth.

When the lord of the field responds to the [Phoenicians’] complaints, he responds not to the crowd as a whole, but to one person in particular. He calls him “friend.” That Matthew uses the word friend (phile), and not servant (doule), is an important distinction according to John, because servants, unlike friends, do not know what their master is doing (Jn. 15.13)

Singling out this friend, the lord of the workers asks the same question that Jonah’s God did: “Are you angry because I am generous?”

Twice now, we have seen in the world of Scripture God’s people incited to anger by the generosity of God. At this point in the series of readings, we who are friends of and labor on behalf of the Lord would do well to ask the Holy Spirit to show us whatever anger we might, in order to be burrowed into the Word of God that frees us and makes us as generous as he is.

Philippians 1.21-27

Jonah would rather die than live, and Paul “would desire to depart.” (1.23) But Paul’s choice of death is different. Paul is reflecting on Jesus Christ, whose grievous concern over the withering of Nineveh (and the whole race of men) moved him to anger, a righteous anger that takes the form of generosity instead of suicide. Generosity is hopeful and humble anger moved to sacrifice. This is also called pity. Jesus lays down his life as a living sacrifice on behalf of the people who performed more destruction than Nineveh. In the wake of Jesus’ life, and in knowledge of the gospel, Paul chooses not suicide but fruitful labor unto death after the example of Jesus who was obedient to the point of death (1.24-26; 2.8)

And we can’t forget Paul’s biography. Paul was an angry young man as well. An Israelite like Jonah, and a friend of God like the worker in Matthew, Paul was angry at the generosity God demonstrated through the inclusion of the Gentiles in the promises of salvation. Paul, and his Israel, had been working since the first hour of the day, in Matthew’s terms.

But by the time he writes Philippians, nothing can shake Paul’s generosity and joy. He can even rejoice at the success of vain preachers while he, himself, is in prison:

[They] proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. (1.16-17)

Angry Jack and Psalm 145

God has taken away a number of the things I loved most and put sought-after opportunities in my face the moment it was too late for me to take them. By his generosity, he has given my closest friends some of the gifts I have wanted, worked for, and prayed for most, and put them close enough to me to make me angry. But he has also given me gifts—too many to count, more than I’ve been willing to admit, and beyond what I could have imagined. Let’s leave it at that.

In the meantime, suffice to say that God turns his angry friends and co-laborers into generous ones. I don’t know how, or what the connection is, but it’s a faithful reading of these passages. A friend recently reminded me of a line from L’Engle that I’ll paraphrase here: “Be angry at God; only God can take your anger and turn it into something beautiful.”

A more specialized doctor of souls could tell you, in finer detail, how God turns an angry young man into a generous person, but I know that Psalm 145, the psalm appointed for this week, is a good school.

Here’s Psalm 145, and one observation: the psalmist uses the word “all” 17 times in 21 verses, which is a lot. It’s used in lines like, “The LORD is good to all, / and his mercy is over all that he has made,” “The LORD upholds all who are falling / and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you / and you give them their food in due season,” and “let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.” (Ps. 145.9, 14-15, 22) He is my God and my friends’ God; my favorite colleagues’ God and the God of my students who are on special plans; the God of the people who have left me one way or another and the God of the new people I met at church this week. He calls all of us, and all of us are called to forgive one another, turn to God, and join him in his generous work of renewal.

Pray and sing the psalms with the friends of God so that you, rejoicing with those who rejoice, and knowing that those who serve and befriend God are especially prone to anger, may be more and more transfigured into a grateful, generous, and joyful co-laborer and friend.