16th Sunday after Pentecost-Rev Melanie Lemburg

 

16^th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20A

September 20, 2020

 

        When I was a baby priest, just a few years into my ordained ministry, when I would get in a bind, I would call my mentor, the now retired Canon to the Ordinary, and ask him for advice.  This man, who has known me since I was three years old, would never tell me what to do, but he would give me helpful insight or perspective into my situation that allowed me to develop more as a priest and a person and to figure out a solution to the problem myself. 

        I remember vividly one such conversation, about conflict in my parish of the time, when my mentor told me a lesson he learned from Bowen Family Systems Theory.  He talked about how a leader needs to think of the church or system like a big ball in a hotel ballroom.  The leader is called to be on the dance floor dancing with all the people and also, at the same time, standing on the balcony looking down from above to see a bigger picture.  Since that phone call, I’ve done a little more investigating into family systems theory (and plan to pursue it as my continuing ed for this year in a virtual format), and I’ve learned that some of the teachings that come out of this analogy also illustrate key teachings about self-differentiation.  This includes the ability to observe one’s self, recognizing that the only way we can improve relationships is to begin reflecting on our own behavior and to work to change that.  It means understanding that the only thing we have power to change is ourselves.  And it also helps us remember, when we get caught up in the dance on the dance floor, that there is always a bigger perspective, a bigger pattern to the dance, that we may need to climb up to the balcony out of the fray to observe. 

        Our readings for today show us ways in which participants in the story have become myopic, nearsighted, aware only of their own needs, and the readings show us how God is inviting them to join with God in seeing the bigger perspective and participating in it.

        The book of Jonah is one of my favorite books of the bible.  If you haven’t ever sat down and read it or haven’t encountered it since you were a child in Sunday School, you should really sit down and read it.  It’s really short, only 4 few chapters, and it’s really funny.  The story is this.  God tells Jonah he needs to go to Ninevah to tell the people there to repent.  But Jonah doesn’t want to go to Ninevah, so he gets on a boat and makes a run for it in the opposite direction of Ninevah. The Lord hurls a great storm upon the sea where Jonah’s ship is, and the sailors are afraid and tell Jonah to pray to his God.  The sailors cast lots, and the lot falls on Jonah, so they demand to know from him why this is happening.  Jonah tells the sailors that they should pick him up and throw him overboard and the storm will stop, so they do, and it does.  And then God sends a giant fish to come and swallow Jonah up.  Jonah prays to God for deliverance for three days and nights from the belly of the fish, and God makes the fish spit Jonah out on dry land.  Then God tells Jonah again to go to Ninevah and call them to repent, and this time, Jonah does it.  Jonah’s call to repentance is so effective that word gets to the king, and he decrees that all Ninevites are to put on sackcloth and ashes and to repent, and that even the animals are to wear the sackcloth to show how repentant all the Ninevites are so that God may change God’s mind and not smite them all. 

That’s when our reading for today picks up.  Jonah has done exactly what God has told him to do, but get this.  This repentance on the part of Ninevah makes Jonah really, really angry.   Jonah prays to God and says, “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.”  When God relents from smiting Ninevah because they have repented, Jonah has a temper tantrum.  But God does not leave Jonah alone in his near-sightedness and anger.  God invites Jonah to join God in seeing the bigger picture.  God asks Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?” and then God grows a bush to shade Jonah in his temper tantrum as he sits on a hilltop waiting and watching and hoping against hope that God is still going to smite Ninevah.  And God sends a worm to eat the bush so it dies, and Jonah gets even angrier.  And God asks him again, “Is it right for you to be angry?”  God says, As much as you care for this one bush, can’t you understand the bigger picture-how much more I care for the whole city of Ninevah, “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?”

        And that’s the end of the book.  We don’t know what happens to Jonah, what he chooses to do in the face of God’s invitation to join God in seeing a bigger picture, in the face of  God’s invitation to examine “is it really right for you to be angry?”

        Our gospel reading for today also gives us a glimpse, through Jesus’s parable, into some of these questions.  “Is it right for you to be angry” at how I pay other workers in my vineyard when I am paying you what we agreed upon?  The workers of the vineyard are invited to join the landowner in the bigger picture of what justice, equity, generosity and economy look like in the kingdom of God, and Jesus invites us to do the same. 

        Your invitation this week is to ponder some questions.  What ways might you be called to come off the dance-floor of your life and go up to the balcony to see the bigger picture-of your life, your family, this church, your school, our country, the world?  Or, if you are like me, finding yourself getting angry about all sorts of different things, perhaps we can use God’s question to Jonah—"Is it right for you to be angry?” to help us gain more self-awareness, self-control, and to participate in life on a bigger picture.