“The Dungeon of Resentment”

Today’s second scripture reading comes from the short Old Testament book about a whiny, uncooperative prophet with a dramatic flair named Jonah. If you’ve ever cracked open a children’s bible, you’ve seen a picture of Jonah in his most famous position—in the belly of the whale. But honestly, I find that the least interesting part of Jonah’s story. Before I get ahead of myself, let’s start with a bit of re-cap of how he found himself there. The book begins with the Biblical equivalent of, “Once upon a time…” It says, “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai.” God told him to preach a message of repentance to the great city Nineveh for their wickedness and without saying a word of protest, Jonah immediately went… on a ship to the opposite end of the known world. Nineveh was to the East and so Jonah went West to Tarshish. 

So why was Jonah so resistant to this call from God? Because Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians were the ones who conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 922 BCE and deported its citizens and nearly succeeded in capturing Jerusalem a few years later. The Assyrians were the sworn enemies of the Israelites and Nineveh, with its reputation for violence and terrorism was a symbol of all that opposed the Lord and the Lord’s people. This was more than asking an Ohio State Fan to bring the gospel to Ann Arbor, Michigan. This was like God asking a Jew who had lost family in the Holocaust to undertake a mission to post-WWII Nazi Germany. God was asking Jonah to preach to his oppressors and Jonah wanted none of that. 

But of course, Jonah doesn’t stand a chance against the will of God and so, when he found himself in the belly of the whale, he prayed his only redeeming prayer in the whole book, “I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the LORD!” And so, the Lord spoke to the fish and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.

Finally, Jonah goes and does the job of a prophet—he tells the people of Nineveh to repent of their evil ways. And in a nearly unprecedented response—they immediately do. These violent oppressors are the quickest ones in the Old Testament to respond to God’s call to repentance. Unlike the weeping prophet Jeremiah who spent his whole life trying to get the Israelites to repent, Jonah utters only a few words, “40 days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” and the whole city repents. And that brings us right up to our scripture passage for today and in it, Jonah doesn’t quite respond as if he had just succeeded in the important task God had called him to. So hear now, Jonah 3:10-4:11, 

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed God’s mind about the calamity that God had said God would bring upon them; and God did not do it.

But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.

The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. 

I told you Jonah had a dramatic flair. More than just dramatic, this prophet of God had a full-on meltdown. I can practically imagine God looking at Jonah the way a parent looks at their sobbing toddler when God says, ‘Is right for you to be angry about this?” Have you ever had a meltdown like Jonah’s? I’m talking full-on, “the world is ending” nonsense. The kind that, in retrospect, are still too embarrassing to be funny? I cannot even count how many I had. I have, what one might call, “big feelings” and sometimes those feelings get a liiiiitle too big and all notions of “rational thinking” go right out the window. Thankfully, I’m better now about reserving meltdowns for my car, or my home, but I’m not going to lie, there is a part of me that is just a bit relieved to know that God can work through people who don’t always have their act together. 

Jonah’s meltdown begins because he is furious that he is enemies will be spared God’s wrath. And Jonah particularly is furious with God because this is exactly what he knew would happen. Jonah was raised on the Psalms, like the one we read earlier today, so he knew and trusted in the character of God. He knew what would happen if the people of Nineveh repented—God would forgive them. He knew that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. And the last people in the world that Jonah wanted to see receive God’s love are the Ninevites. So when God does forgive them, he has a full-on meltdown. Jonah is so mad he can’t even respond to God’s questions and storms out of the city in a huff. It just doesn’t feel fair. 

But God isn’t really interested in what “feels” fair. It reminds me of today’s gospel reading for today that I talked about in Children’s Time—a parable from Matthew 20, in which Jesus tells of a landowner who hires workers early in the morning and promises them a day’s wages, which they all accept as fair pay. But then, the landowner went out again at noon and hired more workers for the same pay. And again, at three. And again, at five. So, when the day ended and all the workers went to receive their pay, the ones who worked the full day expected to be paid more, but instead the landowner paid them all the same wage, regardless of how long they worked. Of course, those who had worked all day complained at the unfairness of the situation, but the landowner said ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

“Are you envious because I am generous?” How many of us, if asked that question, would guiltily nod yes. We love to celebrate God’s generosity when it is directed our way, but when it’s directed toward those we despise it just feels wrong. God, you’re not supposed to be good to those people. We all have “those people.” 

Simply turn on the news and depending on the channel, “those people” are migrants in a caravan, “a basket of deplorables”, Antifa, Nevers Trump-ers, Always Trump-ers, Black Lives Matter, Coastal Elites, RINOs, and the list goes on and on. We can’t pretend we’re not hearing it. The polarization and politicization of seemingly everything we know are hard to escape. We are told there are only two types of people—Right and Left. Red and Blue. My people and those people. It’s that kind of thinking that has Jonah so angry he cannot see what it is in front of him.

When he leaves the city, he is still so angry that he has one truly epic meltdown left in him. When the bush that he was so thrilled about dies, he was so hot and miserable that he said, “it is better for me to die than live.” And again, like a tolerant but clearly not having it parent, God says, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he says, “Yes, angry enough to die!” And those are the last recorded words of Jonah, son of Amittai.

When I was growing up, my parents subscribed to the local newspaper and would always leave the comics out on the kitchen table for me to read in the mornings. A classic cartoon was always, Rose is Rose. Occasionally, the cartoon would feature Rose in her “dungeon of resentment” where she sat and sulked with a ball and chain around her leg.

Her family would try and pull her out and, since it’s a cartoon, eventually they would succeed. I love this metaphor because I, too, have been in my dungeon of resentment. I get angry and then I am miserable, but the weight of that anger feels like a ball and chain that I just cannot unclasp and get out of. I know I’m in the dungeon by my own choice, that I could get out whenever I want, and yet still I sit for far too long. 

It’s how I imagine Jonah at the end of chapter 4—he is so deep in his dungeon of resentment that he cannot see all the good that has just happened. What happened was a miracle—a 5-word sermon changed the hearts of 120,000 people! That’s the stuff prophets and pastors dream of! He succeeded in his job! Not only that, but his enemies repenting is a good thing for Jonah’s people. If his enemies have truly repented of their evil ways, then they are no longer a threat to the Israelites. Repentance doesn’t mean their actions didn’t have consequences. True repentance means atoning for your sins—making it right with those you hurt. And so, in their repentance, the Ninevites have the potential to become partners in peace instead. The fact that God is slow to anger and ready to relent from punishing is not just good news for the Ninevites. This is good news for Jonah. 

But he misses out on all of that. He misses out on enjoying what God can do. He misses the opportunity partner with the newly repentant Ninevites in creating a more just and beautiful world. Jonah fails to do what God did—he refused to change his mind about the people he hated. But God did. God changed God's mind. There was new evidence before God—the people of Nineveh had changed their ways and so God was willing to change God’s mind too. If the God of the universe, who created you and me and all that we know can change their mind, then maybe we can too. Maybe we can allow the people we most despise the ability to change their ways. And if they do, maybe can stop punishing them for who they had been and start welcoming them for who they hope to be. Maybe we can learn from Jonah’s mistake and be willing to change our minds about others.

The book ends with a question from God that receives no response. God asks Jonah, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city with 120,000 persons and many animals?” 

And that’s where the story ends. It ends with a question that, I believe, is intended to provoke our response. We cannot know how Jonah responded, so we must respond to God’s question. Shouldn’t God care more about thousands of human beings than a single bush providing shade for a grumpy prophet?

God is asking us, “Shouldn’t I be concerned with those people?” Or maybe God is asking, “Shouldn’t you be concerned with those people?” Oof. We may be as reluctant as Jonah, but we have a choice—we can choose to stay in our dungeons of resentment, letting things as small as a dying plant keep us from seeing that the Gospel has the power to change the lives of even those we hate. Or, we can choose to be different than Jonah. We can choose to be used by God, to call even our enemies to true repentance and to welcome them with open arms when they change. It’s not an easy thing to do. There’s a reason Jonah worked so hard to avoid it. Choosing to love our enemies requires that we give up our moral superiority and oh how love to feel like we, and we alone, have the moral high ground. So there will be days that we feel like Jonah heading in the opposite direction of where we know God wants us to be, but let us hope that it doesn’t take a whale to get us back on track. 

People of God, staying in your dungeon of resentment comes at a high cost so don’t miss out on what God is doing in your midst. Don’t miss out on the joy of seeing those people change their ways. Don’t miss out on how you may be transformed in the process. Don’t miss out. Amen.