The Tyranny of Certainty

Jonah 3:10-4:11

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he 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 and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. 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?”

Matthew 20:1-16

Jesus said to the disciples, “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? 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?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Jonah was CERTAIN.  The vineyard workers were CERTAIN.  

Jonah became angry when God did not work the way he was CERTAIN God should work… angry enough to die… it says.  

The vineyard workers became angry when the landowner did not pay in the way they were CERTAIN he should pay.  Angry to the point of grumbling… it says. 

Both Jonah and the vineyard workers were CERTAIN they knew how God worked… how God SHOULD work… how God MUST work!  And in these parables, one from the Hebrew Prophets and one from Matthew’s Gospel, we see both Jonah and the vineyard workers crash headlong, at full speed, without a helmet, into the solid brick wall that is human certainty when it encounters things Divine.   

Both Jonah and the vineyard workers both come to their different situations settled in the comfort of their certainty.  Certainty is so tempting because it offers us something both comfortable and comforting.  Think about gravity.  We don’t worry about whether today gravity will be “on” or “off” as we go about our day.  We are certain it will be “on” and that certainty is comforting.  It is always there.  Sometimes gravity results in pain, sure, but that pain always makes sense.  The pain is because we fell.  Because gravity was “on” as it always is.  It makes sense and things that make sense are comforting, even while the bruises are uncomfortable.  

So as each of us and the Divine draw closer, our temptation is, like it was with Jonah and the vineyard workers, to bring the kind of certainty we have about gravity to the Divine encounter as well.  We want God to be both comfortable and comforting… always “on” in the ways we have decided are best or right or fair.    

But what both Jonah and the vineyard workers discover, is that in applying certainty to their encounter with the Divine, in each case, God reveals their certainty to be, not at all a comfort, but something else entirely.  Earlier this week I tried and failed to recover a particular phrase I had heard for what certainty becomes as we move closer to the Divine.  

I never really recovered that one little phrase, but when we move closer to the Divine certainty becomes, not a comfort, but something like “Idolatry” worshiping a “little g” god who does things our way.  That’s a Jason Larson idea.  Or it becomes like a “Sin” as we insist God follow our rules and not be free.  That’s a Peter Enns idea.  Or it becomes an “Addiction” where with each encounter the comfort we seek demands more and more certainty.  That’s a Peter Rollins idea. Or maybe as we and the Divine draw close, certainty transforms into a Tyranny, cutting us off from the fullness of God’s grace and love, because we are certain it just can’t be genuinely that enormous.  

Whatever the “right” phrase is, the truth is that when we and the Divine grow near, the easy illusion of certainty we experience with things like gravity begins to fall apart and it transforms from a help to a hinderance.  It goes from being a liberator to a jailer… from a mercy to mercilessness.  

This is the wall Jonah hit when he brought certainty into his close encounter with the Divine.  Jonah decided that he would rather die holding onto his certainty about God than to let go of all he THOUGHT he knew and embrace, with radical acceptance, that God will do what God will do.    

This is the same wall that the vineyard workers hit when the manager called them in to be paid.  They had been certain about how the vineyard owner would pay them all, and when the owner did not do as they were certain he would do, they grumbled rather than letting go of what they THOUGHT they knew.  They chose not to embrace, with radical acceptance, that the vineyard owner was going to do with the vineyard owner’s money whatever the owner wanted to do.  

The temptation to seek certainty as a way to find comfort is strong.  I find myself drinking from the firehose of the news these days hoping, beyond hope to mine just one little nugget of certainty that might give me just a tiny bit of comfort.  So, I know… trying to hold onto certainty is completely understandable… after all, certainty very often gives a very convincing illusion that it is working… like it does with gravity!  

But when it comes to our encounters with the Divine in particular, certainty fails us, and the more we insist upon it, the more certainty grows into an addiction, an idol, a prison, or a tyranny that leads us into angry grumbling at best or wanting to die at the worst.  

These two parables do many, many things and teach many, many lessons, but today I want us to hear just one of them. As you and the Divine draw close to one another… hold your dogmas as loosely as ever you can… use the lightest of touches as you steer your doctrines, and let the certainty you hold in your clenched fist, slip through your fingers and allow God to do what God chooses, remembering always that God chooses BOTH… the first… as well as the last and both arrive back in the love from where they began.  Amen.