Short song: "The whole earth is filled with God's glory"

Do you ever experience moments when it seems as though the world is worshiping God through its beauty? A couple of days ago I was walking and felt that way, watching the sun bend its rays around a cloud. I wrote this song, borrowing words to express how I was feeling.

Click here to hear a MIDI version of this song.

Short song: "Wake up, O sleeper"

A couple weeks ago I came across the following passage in Ephesians 5:14:

Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.

The message continues to stir me. Apparently these could have been the lyrics to a hymn sung by early Christians. I've written a short song based on the words.

Click here to hear a MIDI version of the song.

Jonah 3-4: "A Garden in the Wilderness"

In the summer of 2013, I went on a class trip to the UK to study worship and Christianity there. As part of my class project, I wrote two sermons based on the book of Jonah. You can read the first sermon here. Below you will find the second sermon, "A Garden in the Wilderness."

Partnering resources:

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 

Acts 10:34-43

"Song of the Vine"

Jonah 3-4

A second chance is a gift, but it does not always make everyone happy.

God's word comes to Jonah a second time:  “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”  

The first time God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah ran away. He bought a ticket to sail in the opposite direction. God sent a violent storm, and Jonah told the sailors to throw him overboard because he knew that this storm was from God, and that the only way to stop the storm was for Jonah to stop running from God. God sent a great fish to swallow Jonah, and after being in the belly of the fish for three days and nights, the fish vomited Jonah back on land.  

Now, when God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah obeys.  His message to Nineveh is short:  “Forty more days, and Nineveh will be overturned!”  Everyone in Nineveh, from the greatest to the least, turns to God.  And as a result, God turns to the Ninevites.  God changes God's mind and does not bring destruction on the city.

But this makes Jonah very angry.  Jonah wants to die because he has had a hunch that all along, God would forgive the Ninevites, who are the enemies of Jonah's people.  God asks Jonah, “Have you any right to be angry?”

Jonah does not reply to God with words, but by going away.  He sits down east of Nineveh and makes a booth to shelter himself, and watches what will happen to the city.

Then, God plants what is called, in Hebrew, a qiqayon—often translated as “vine,” “bush,” “gourd,” or “plant”--for Jonah.  This is the only place in the Bible where the word qiqayon appears, which makes it very meaningful.  The vine is unique.  It lives for only one day, and yet is the cause for much happiness and grief for Jonah.  

What is the meaning of this vine?

Throughout the book of Jonah, a few very important words are repeated; in particular, the word “great” (which is, in Hebrew, gadol) and the word “evil” (ra'ah).  Earlier, the book describes the “great city” of Nineveh, the “great wind upon the sea,” and the great fish that swallows Jonah.  The author of Jonah uses “evil” to describe Nineveh and the sea storm.  This word “evil” is in the royal edict which calls the Ninevites to “turn from their evil ways.”  Even God's plans against Nineveh are described as destruction, or evil.

Here, with Jonah outside of Nineveh, the two words “great” and “evil” come together.  The NIV translates the verse as “But Jonah was greatly displeased,” but in Hebrew it says that “great evil” comes upon Jonah.  Then God plants the vine, which saves Jonah from his discomfort, from his great evil.  The vine overthrows Jonah's great evil into great joy.

*

When I was in kindergarten, I had a friend named Zach who was in 1st grade.  We didn't have any classes together, but every morning we would sit next to each other on the school bus.  One day, Zach showed me the fossil of a fish that he was going to share with his class that day, and he spoke with me a little about it.  I felt honored to hold and examine this fossil.

One morning later, the bus driver stopped in front of Zach's house, and Zach didn't get on the bus.  Several mornings later, we would wait for him, but he wouldn't come.  Later, I overheard two teachers talking about him, saying that he had been very sick.  I eventually learned that he had died.

The vine reminds me of Zach because for a short while, like the vine, Zach brought me happiness and comfort, and saved me from the great evil of being without a friend, alone.  Our friendship taught me what a good friendship is like, that it involves sharing and happiness.  Zach was a gift to me from God, a friend whose company I could experience for only a short time, as was the vine to Jonah.      

This summer, I joined a class on a trip to Scotland.  For one week, we stayed at the Iona Abbey on the Isle of Iona, where we lived in community with members of the Abbey and about thirty other guests who were visiting.  One of the most memorable encounters I had was at lunch when an older volunteer sat next to me and began talking to me a little about herself. She also shared how she had been thinking about time, and how special a moment it is when we give freely of ourselves to others, when we share our time with them.  She said that her grandmother used to say that she only wished she had more time.  From our conversation I learned that time is a gift from God, but a gift so often difficult to embrace and share.

Iona Abbey

This volunteer encouraged me to be like the vine in the story of Jonah, to share the gift of time and company with others.  Could God have created all of us to be vines for the purpose of comforting, being with, and blessing each other for however much time we live?  To be, together, a garden in the wilderness?

Through the vine, God teaches Jonah how to cherish another living being, giving him the chance to have compassion for the lives of his enemies.  At the end of the book, God says to Jonah, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”

The vine is a symbol for Nineveh, its people and its animals. Just as Jonah loved the vine, so God loves Nineveh—and far more than Jonah loved the vine, because Jonah did not plant, water, or grow the vine, but God created and has watched over the Ninevites. 

The vine is a symbol for life. Could it be that, just as Jonah dwelled in the shade of that vine, God dwells and receives comfort from Nineveh, from all of life?  Could all of life be a temporary dwelling place in which God delights, a temple through which we can worship God and be in God’s company?

*

In addition to being a symbol for Nineveh and life, the vine may also be a symbol for the place where God dwells, the temple.  After God asks Jonah, “Have you any right to be angry?”, Jonah goes east of Nineveh and builds a booth.  The word for “booth” in Hebrew is sukkah. This is the same word that is used earlier in the Bible, in the book of Leviticus, for the portable shelters that the Israelites lived in when they traveled through the wilderness after their exodus out of Egypt.

When Jonah sits under his booth, God plants the vine. As some writers have suggested, if Jonah's booth is a symbol for the booths that the Israelites lived in when they were in the desert, then it could be that the vine symbolizes the tabernacle, the movable temple in which God lived among the Israelites when they were in the desert.

This would not be out of place in the book of Jonah.  Throughout the book weaves the thread of worship.  Earlier, when the sailors ask Jonah who he is, he says he is a Hebrew who worships God.  When Jonah is swallowed by the fish, Jonah worships in song, yearning for God's temple. So it almost seems fitting for God to build a temple here in this foreign land in which Jonah can worship.

But the twist is that the next day, God destroys this temple!  The very place where God lives is destroyed by God.  Maybe Jonah does have a right to be angry.  Not only has God spared the Israelites' enemies from destruction; God has done violence against God's own servant, Jonah, through a scorching east wind, and worse, against God's own temple, through a worm.  If the house where God is supposed to live is destroyed, then where is God?

This question of God’s presence has lurked throughout the whole book of Jonah. When God first calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah runs in the opposite direction from Nineveh, and in the opposite direction from God’s presence. In the belly of the fish, Jonah sings and learns that even there, God is listening. Now, in his anger, looking at the great city, Jonah debates directly with God, which suggests that God is also here, in Nineveh. If the vine, symbolizing God’s temple, is destroyed, then where else can Jonah look for God except in the city that is before Jonah’s eyes? 

Jonah is angered to learn that God’s presence is not only in Israel, but also in Nineveh. Jonah is angered to learn that God’s concern is not only for the Israelites, but also for the Ninevites. But this is no surprise to Jonah. He has known this all along.

*

I go to a school in Richmond, Indiana, called Earlham School of Religion.  It is very diverse. First, it is a Christian seminary in the tradition of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers.  Our seminary is in partnership with another seminary which belongs to the Church of the Brethren.  Also, many students at my school are not Quakers.  There are members of different denominations, such as the Roman Catholic Church, the Unitarian Universalist Church, the Assemblies of God, and the Church of the Nazarene. And some students do not identify themselves as Christians.

Beyond faith traditions, the student body is between the ages of twenty-three and eighty; I am friends with students from Africa, South America, and North America; and each of us comes from different ways of life and different perspectives on politics, social issues, and God.

And I haven’t even mentioned our personality types!

At my school, we study, work, play, and worship God together. But being in such a community has sometimes made me feel like Jonah.  My boundary line dividing who I think God loves and who I think God works and dwells among has become blurred, if not often erased, and this has made me uneasy and confused.  

But the presence of God is not something that I can point to and spot the way I can spot, for instance, the color red or the moon. I have been challenged to look for God’s presence in the people at my school—in all places and people—and to be open to who I believe God is and is not concerned about, who God is and is not working and moving through, open to who I believe does and does not count as God’s beloved. 

I believe God has been asking me, just as God asked Jonah, “Should I not be concerned about that great city?” At the end of the story, it is Jonah, and no longer the Ninevites, who need to turn to God. Just as Jonah cherished the vine, God has cherished the Ninevites even before the Ninevites turned to God, and God continues to love them. Will Jonah do the same? Will we?

*

With this question, “Should I not be concerned?”, the book of Jonah ends. We are left wondering what Jonah thinks of all this, what Jonah will do next. We are left wondering what we think of all this, what we will do next. 

Like Jonah, we too may be challenged today to share God’s concern for all people, especially the people most difficult for us to love. But Jonah is not the only character we can identify with in this story. Here before I finish, I would like to return to the Ninevites, and to a question that they ask. 

Jonah has preached to the Ninevites plainly:  “Forty more days, and Nineveh will be overturned!”  It is a simple sermon with no hope.  Yet the Ninevites express the kind of faith that we would expect only the people of God to have.  They believe God.  They become the holy people, mourning their sin and turning toward God.  Jonah tells them they are running out of time, and so they redeem the time they have and live into the question, the wager, upon which all their hope depends:  “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” Another translation says, “Who knows?  God may relent and change his mind.”  

It is through this question, “Who knows?”, through this hope, that the Ninevites mourn their sin and receive God’s forgiveness. It is through hope that the Ninevites live. 

There is no reason for the Ninevites to expect that God will change God's mind.  As far as we know, the Ninevites have never before heard from or spoken to God, nor do they know God's ways.  But it is the Ninevites' only hope to hope that God cares for even them.  And they are right.

Just as Jonah cared for the vine, and just as God cares for the Ninevites, God cares for you.

What is your hope? What do you ask God for? May you have the same hope and courage as the Ninevites, even when the future seems to have already been written against you.

God may change God’s mind. Though you may fear otherwise, God delights in you. Time may overflow: time to cherish other people, time to cherish God, time to cherish life itself. It is not too late to turn to God, to live rightly, to live. Your future may be full of great joy. God may make a way for all people and all things to live together in the fullness of God’s love. God has, and God will. God may be as good as we hope God is—maybe even better. God may give a second chance.

Who knows?