Anger, Envy or ThankfulnessJonah 3:10-4:11; Isaiah 55:6-9; Matthew 20:1-16
A few weeks ago, in a children’s sermon in Junction, Jim told the kids about Mignon’s new favorite reply when she doesn’t get what she wants. She puffs out her bottom lip, stomps her foot and exclaims…it’s not fair! Who among us has not had this reaction countless times in our life? It is seemingly a part of our make-up as humans that we should not only expect fairness or justice, but that we demand it…at least for ourselves. Occasionally, we may champion it for those we like or that we are kin to. But those whom we dislike, who have hurt our feelings or have ignited our ire, we relish the thought that they should get what they deserve and languish in their sorry predicaments!
I really believe the saying is true that the quality of your life is what you make of it. In other words, our attitudes and our reactions to both the good and the bad that comes to us is one small part of our existence that we can actually control to an extent. It is rather amazing to me that since we as humans want so badly to control so much of our lives, we fail to really work on the areas we do have more power over. Instead, we too often revert to a mob mentality; jump on whatever bandwagon is flying by and let the flow of the crowd dictate our thoughts, actions and reactions. And by and large, those actions and reactions tend to be tinged with an ever increasing level of anger and resentment, regardless of the situation. Read the news, watch almost anything on TV, check out reader responses to articles or blog posts online…I think our culture has just fallen in love with being angry, being resentful and confrontational.
In our scriptures today from Jonah and Matthew, we get two stories of people being angry with a seemingly good outcome. The problem is the outcome is better for others, thus making the players in these dramas downright mad. In both cases, the resentful parties are chastised a bit. The workers in the vineyard feel cheated with the wage they agreed upon that morning with the master when late comers are given the same amount. They show their displeasure and the owner asks, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” Then, we hear God asking Jonah, “Is it well for you to be angry?” and Jonah replies like a spoiled little child, “Yes, angry enough to die!” He basically says, if these Ninevites don’t get what they deserve, I don’t even want to keep living.
We don’t know what happened to Jonah, the story closes with his pouting and God’s rhetorical question about God’s right to show mercy to who God chooses. Knowing what medical research tells us today, if Jonah wasn’t able to get over his anger, it very well may have killed him. There can be fatal physical consequences brought on by unchecked, unresolved anger including high blood pressure, heart problems, ulcers and the like. Thus, learning to pull in our anger, learning to live with an attitude of love and forgiveness is not only part of our calling as Christians, I think it is a part of how God designed our bodies and minds to be the healthiest and most productive.
Now anger in and of itself, is not sinful or bad. On the contrary, it is a marker, a way to tell that something in our life or attitude is out of kilter, not quite right. We actually need anger at times to bring ourselves to an awareness of that something that needs adjusting or fixing. So the actual initial feeling of anger is not wrong, it is what we do with that anger that makes the difference, that creates sin or frees us from sin. When we feel anger rising up, we need to honestly investigate it and not simply react. We need to consider if the problem is something from the outside affecting us or if the problem is actually coming from inside of us.
For example, if we see an innocent person being physically hurt or being taken advantage of for someone else’s gain and we become angry, then our anger can become to trigger to help right the wrong, to point out to authorities the misdeed and assist the victim. It doesn’t mean we should enact our own justice or judgment and beat the tar out of the offender, we still need to work within the systems our culture has in place or else work to change the systems if they need an overhaul. On the other hand, if our child comes home from school upset because the coach gave the starting position to a kid whose parents we don’t like and we feeling that anger rising…we need to be careful. Fairness and justice in school affairs, especially small towns, is always in the eye of the beholder. Is the coach really showing partiality or are we just feeling the kind of anger that comes from our inner selves being a mess, the anger that can be the ugliest and most ruinous to our lives of all – envy and jealousy? Envy has long been considered one of the 7 deadly sins and when we really look at its effects, we can understand why.
Granted, Jim and I have yet to face the trial and tribulations of inter and intra school competition, but as a high school coach for 7 years, I saw a lot. Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame and often for those who never got what they felt they deserved, then by golly, their kid is gonna have both shares or else! I was always blown away by the pettiness, the shallowness of so many parents. One day after practice while waiting for their kids to come out of the locker room, I overheard one parent say to another, “It doesn’t really matter if our team wins, as long as the right kids are starting and playing the most.” What was even more egregious was how the listener nodded with approval!
As I have gotten older and especially now that I have a child of my own, I have often wondered if my parents were really that exceptional, or if they just had the good sense to deal with some of their anger, disappointments, envies and jealousies in a much more controlled and productive manner? I know it is not that they never felt those emotions, but I am thankful that they didn’t allow their “inner messes” to in turn give me the idea that I was entitled or deserved more than I got. I feel fairly certain that there were times they wanted to go fight my battles or get revenge on someone who hurt me. My best guess that goes in line with their character is that they turned their hurts and disappointment over to God more often than they reacted to them. They taught me to be thankful for what I did have, to work harder if I wanted something more and that everything I had – especially talent and opportunity – were gifts from God. Through this learning I was blessed with a great foundation that has helped me deal with disappointments in my life. I think it also has helped me to avoid the pitfalls that non-tempered envy and jealousy can create.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t get jealous or that I am never envious. In the last three or four months, Jim has sent me at least 5 emails with links to articles about little kids getting a hole in one or someone firing two in the same round of golf. Yea, I’m jealous and I’m envious because I have never come closer than about 8-12 inches from a hole in one. Does it make me want to pout and ask God to die? Not really…sometimes I just never open the link to read the article when I see the heading. Jim even made a hole-in-one the other day when we were playing a round on a video game…my joy was not full with his experience. While these may be seemingly insignificant examples, I can say that I have struggle with more serious ones.
Before we finally got pregnant that first time early in 2005, I found myself having to work really hard to not be envious or jealous of couples with children. I wanted a child so badly. Every time that Jim and I did our Christmas Eve monologue about Mary and Joseph it would just cut me to the core. I will always remember, very vividly, in December of 2004 driving home from Harper’s community Christmas service. Jim had gone to Roosevelt that night while I traveled east. On the way home something made me snap and I broke down sobbing, screaming at God, pleading and begging. As I drove farther along through the tears and had allowed more and more pent up emotion to escape, I found my begging and pleading to be changing in tone. I found myself truly trying to give the whole situation to God, because I knew handling it my way was seriously hurting me mentally and emotionally. I begin asking not for the thing I wanted almost more than my life, but asking for the ability to deal with and handle whatever God had in store for us. By the time I made it home and pulled in the drive, my only request was that somehow God’s will would be made known to me sooner rather than later. When I walked in the door Jim was already home, but I never let on what I had been through on the drive home…he’s never heard that story until now.
As many of you know, we found out just a few weeks later in January that I was pregnant, but by late February I had miscarried. Even while we were both devastated by this turn of events, the outpouring of love we received from so many gave us strength and comfort. Jim will tell you, over-all I did handle it a little better than he did. I still had to fight times of anger, jealousy or envy, but I think what kept me grounded was recalling my conversation with God on that ride home. I may have lost that pregnancy, but because of it, I knew I was capable of getting pregnant. It wasn’t a guarantee that we would have a child, but I looked upon the experience as God’s answer to my prayer. It was a sign for me that my desire possibly was within the scope of God’s will and so in a strange way, I have always been very thankful for that painful event. Within seven months, I was pregnant again. Now, I just need to always remember that that little fireball screaming, “It’s not fair!” is that answer to my prayer!
In an article commenting on these scriptures, Luke Timothy Johnson describes his bouts with anger and envy as it pertains to the fairness or lack thereof in life. He writes, “What is God up to anyway? I work so hard and they seem to work so little. Why should they get as much or more than I? Ah, envy. Life lived under the curse of peripheral vision, a grudging heart, a small spirit. Socrates called envy "the ulcer of the soul" and I have heard it gnawing within me.” [http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=730] A gnawing, ulcer of the soul…for me that is a good description of what I experience when I my anger is caused by a grudging heart and a small spirit within me.
In Philippians, Paul is addressing a community that is divided by envy and rivalry. He writes in chapter 2:3-4 “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Rev. Johnson continues in reference to these verses, “…envy looks only to "my own interests," my own wage, my own "equality." Paul shows me, I think, what the prophet [Isaiah] has in mind about "seeking the Lord while he is near," for the interests of my neighbor are always near: But like the prophet and parable, [Paul] also reveals how far these thoughts are from being mine.” [Ibid.]
It is true that we are made in the image of God, but that image seems to be a roughly drafted likeness that we are to spend our entire lives working to clean up and make more congruent to the original. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts, our ways are not God’s ways, our timing is not God’s timing, our desires are not God’s desires, our mercy and forgiveness is not God’s mercy and forgiveness. Until we learn to accept these concepts, we are going to find ourselves filled with anger and envy and jealousy. But it takes work and it takes help, because only God in Christ can transform our selfishness into thankfulness, our jealousy into joy for another. It not easy, nor is it readily seen as an acceptable task to most of our modern culture and world. Even churches and religious institutions struggle as they compare membership numbers, budget amounts, and the square footage of buildings and often wind up coveting what others have and what they think they lack. We tend to be obsession as a culture with comparisons, always needing to measure how we stack up to another.
God doesn’t make those comparisons or measurements and we should be oh so thankful for this. Instead of handing out blessings based solely upon what we have earned or deserved, God’s transaction is always in the denomination of grace. When we learn to accept that God’s grace is the rule and foundation for our lives, we may find that envy and jealousy simply make no sense because grace, by definition, is always unexpected, always undeserved, always amazing…otherwise it would not be grace. Thus, to our pettiness God’s answer is grace, to our work-a-holic righteousness God’s answer is grace, to our pride and arrogance, the answer is grace and to our longsuffering or heartbreaking pain, the answer is still grace. There is nothing that exists in our life that is completely ours…all belongs to the Creator of this world and what we have, we owe to grace. Thanks be to God! Amen.
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