Jonah 4:1-11
Psalm 86:3-4, 5-6, 9-10
Luke 11:1-4
Summary
Jonah became angry with God for sparing Nineveh after Jo-
nah had preached of its demise. Because of this Jonah feels
disgraced and he no longer wants to live. Jonah goes out-
side the city and sits beneath a tree to watch what happens
to the city. As he was watching, God has the tree produce a
gourd to provide Jonah with shade. And Jonah was glad.
But then God send a worm to destroy the gourd and caused
the sun to beat down on Jonah. Again, Jonah no longer
wanted to live. God asked why Jonah was concerned about a single
gourd but did not understand that God was concerned about the en-
tire city which contained scores of innocent lives.
Reflection
This reading tells of many of the selfish aspects of our human nature.
Like Jonah, we are angry when things don’t go the way we want them
to. And our anger is even greater when it is done so publicly – when
we have spoken to others about the way things are going to be and
then are denied. So we hide ourselves away and “lick our wounds”
and allow our anger to grow.
And on occasion, the grace of God gives us a simple comfort and al-
lows us a cooling shade from the heat of our troubles and the anger
goes away. And yet when that comfort disappears, we become angry