Sermon for July 2nd, 2017
Jonah 4:1-10
1 Jonah was very indignant at this; he fell into a rage. 2 He prayed to Yahweh and said: ‘Ah! Yahweh, is this not just as I said would happen when when I was still in my own country? That was why I went and fled to Tarshish: I knew that you were a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness, relenting from evil. 3 So now Yahweh, please take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.’
4 Yahweh answered: ‘Have you good reason to be angry?’ 5 Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down to the east of the city. There he made for himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, to see what would happen in the city.
6 Then Yahweh God arranged that a colocynth plant should grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head and soothe his discomfort; and Jonah was delighted with the colocynth plant. 7 But at dawn the next day, God arranged that a worm should attack the colocynth, and it withered. 8 Next, when the sun rose, God arranged a burning wind from the east, and the sun beat down so hard on Jonah’s head that he was overcome and begged for death, saying, ‘It is better for me to die than to live’. 9 God said to Jonah: ‘Have you good reason to be angry about the colocynth plant?’ And he answered: ‘I have every right to be angry, even to death’.
10 And Yahweh answered: ‘You grieve for this colocynth, which cost you no labour, which you did not make grow, which sprouted in a night, and in a night has perished. And am I not to grieve for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, to say nothing of all the animals?’
Jonah: In the Shade of the Kikayon
A man is being given a tour of a mental institution, and he asks the lead psychiatrist: “How do you select who should be admitted to your facility?” The psychiatrist replies: “We fill a bathtub with water and give the person in question three things: A spoon, a tea-cup and a bucket. Then we ask that person to empty the bathtub.”
The man smiles: “Ah, I get it! A sane person would choose the bucket.” The Psychiatrist replies: “No, a sane person would pull the drain plug. Would you like a room with a window or one close to the dining hall?"
Sometimes, in our rush to judge the mental or spiritual condition of others, we fail to recognize our own.
And that's exactly where we find Jonah in the last chapter of his story, in our final sermon on the Book of Jonah. He has traveled many miles across ocean and land to reach the great city of Nineveh.
