Why are you angry?

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/101117.cfm
JON 4:1-11
LK 11:1-4

To understand why, we must understand what anger is.  Wikipedia give us some background on anger:

Anger is an intense emotional response. It is an emotion that involves a strong uncomfortable and hostile response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat. Anger can occur when a person feels their personal boundaries are being or are going to be violated. Some have a learned tendency to react to anger through retaliation as a way of coping. William De Foore, an anger-management writer, described anger as a pressure cooker: we can only apply pressure against our anger for a certain amount of time until it explodes.

Anger is an emotional reaction that impacts the body. A person experiencing anger will also experience physical conditions, such as increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, and increased levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline. Some view anger as an emotion which triggers part of the fight or flight brain response. Anger is used as a protective mechanism to cover up fear, hurt or sadness. Anger becomes the predominant feeling behaviorally, cognitively, and physiologically when a person makes the conscious choice to take action to immediately stop the threatening behavior of another outside force. Anger can have many physical and mental consequences.

The external expression of anger can be found in facial expressions, body language, physiological responses, and at times public acts of aggression. Some animals, for example, make loud sounds, attempt to look physically larger, bare their teeth, and stare. The behaviors associated with anger are designed to warn aggressors to stop their threatening behavior.Rarely does a physical altercation occur without the prior expression of anger by at least one of the participants. While most of those who experience anger explain its arousal as a result of "what has happened to them,"psychologists point out that an angry person can very well be mistaken because anger causes a loss in self-monitoring capacity and objective observability.

Modern psychologists view anger as a primary, natural, and mature emotion experienced by virtually all humans at times, and as something that has functional value for survival. Anger is seen as a supportive mechanism to show a person that something is wrong and requires changing. Anger can mobilize psychological resources for corrective action. Uncontrolled anger can, however, negatively affect personal or social well-being and impact negatively on those around them. The issue of dealing with anger has been written about since the times of the earliest philosophers, but modern psychologists, in contrast to earlier writers, have also pointed out the possible harmful effects of suppressing anger.

[From From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anger]

Why are you angry?

There are many stimuli we receive daily that can trigger anger.  My favorite is watching or listening to the news.  What has our “Twitter in Chief” tweeted today?  Has our congress done anything more productive than staking out there own special interests?  When one of our elected officials is criticizing the other party’s position, are there facts, or are we being manipulated?  Are they “talking in code”? 

Or you can hear about man’s latest inhumanity to man.  Horrible people doing horrible things, oftento completely innocent victims.

Even some of the advertising, which pays for our “free” television, is disguised as an interview. Trust me, I wouldn’t lie to you.

Here in our community above the clouds, our city and county officials tell us how great the community pool will be.  Then it suddenly gets moved to a different location, perhaps to better serve a different purpose than it was originally sold to us as.  Oh, yeah, about those membership fees.  .  . 

Why are you angry?

Or maybe people behaving badly make you angry.  Here’s a short list of someone else’s actions to prime your anger pump:

• Tossing the trash from the recent fast food visit out the car window
  
• Running a stop sign because they don’t seem to think it really means stop
  
• Millionaires kneeling during the Star-Spangled Banner
  

Our readings today started with anger.  Jonah was angry that God did not carry out the evil he threatened against Nineveh. Hmm….  Maybe we need some background here. Jonah is the same Jonah we know from the Jonah and the whale story.  And the whole “throw Jonah from the boat” incident was because the Lord’s word came to Jonah: “Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and preach against it; for their wickedness has come before me.”

Jonah was what we now refer to as a minor prophet.  Instead of following the Lord’s word, he “found a ship going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went down in it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the LORD.” [Jonah 1:3] No reason was given for this disobedience, but it could be that theAssyrians in Nineveh had a reputation for being particularly extreme fighters.  Nineveh was located on the outskirts of Mosul in modern-day northern Iraq. 

It’s not a simple matter to fool God.  “The LORD, however, hurled a great wind upon the sea, and the storm was so great that the ship was about to break up.”[Jonah 1:4]

The story continues with Jonah eventually being thrown overboard to appease the LORD.  The seas calmed, and God sends a great fish to swallow up Jonah.  As he spent the next 3 days and nights in the belly of the fish, Jonah prayed. The LORD must have found the prayer acceptable, because he had the fish deliver Jonah to the shore.

The third chapter of Jonah:

The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:

Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you.

So Jonah set out for Nineveh, in accord with the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an awesomely great city; it took three days to walk through it.

Jonah began his journey through the city, and when he had gone only a single day’s walk announcing, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown,”

the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small,* put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh: “By decree of the king and his nobles, no man or beast, no cattle or sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water.

Man and beast alike must be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God; they all must turn from their evil way and from the violence of their hands.

Who knows? God may again repent and turn from his blazing wrath, so that we will not perish.”

When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.

I would call that a success. God apparently was satisfied. Jonah was angry.

Why are you angry?

Jonah confesses to God “I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, repenting of punishment. And now, LORD, please take my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live."

But the LORD asked, "Have you reason to be angry?"”

Jonah was upset that mercy was shown to the “previously known as horrible people”, simply because they had repented.  He was still holding out some degree of hope that God would lay waste to the city and it’s 120,000 inhabitants when he found a nice spot overlooking the city where he could watch the city’s destruction.

It was VERY hot, so the LORD planted a plant with large leaves (a gourd plant, according to our reading) to provide cooling shade forJonah.  It grew in one day, because, well, God can do that.  Jonah appreciated the shade, but just as the LORD giveth, the LORD taketh away. With the aid of a God-provided worm, the plant was killed, and the shade withered with the plant. The LORD also cranked up the heat.

Once again, Jonah proclaimed he’d be better off dead.

And once again, God asks if Jonah has reason to be angry.  Jonah answers in the affirmative. 

The LORD explains that the plant wasn’t the result of any efforts on Jonah’s behalf, so there wasn’t anything to be angry about.  Also, when a whole city repents, that’s a good thing. Especially when God is true to his “slow to anger and rich in compassion”.

The responsorial Psalm reinforces why God isn’t angry: “Lord,you are merciful and gracious.”

Maybe we can be merciful and gracious, too.  Less angry. For we are told to pray “. . . forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us . . .”

Why are you angry?