Epiphany 4

Jonah makes the same mistake the heathen nations make. He assumes that, being the God of Israel, the Lord is only God in Israel. If he can go far enough away the God’s base of operations, he can escape the command of the Lord. He won’t have to preach to Nineveh, they will not hear the command to Repent, and the Lord will destroy them.

There are a few of these sort of universal ideas about God. The goal is to make God more likeable, to have the work of God – or rather of the gods – apply to more people. But it destroys the essence of the Lord God – who he is – by making him no stronger than the mute idols of our own imagination. Did Jonah really think he could just exit Israel to the West and God would not be able to reach him? Did he think that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the nation of Israel was not powerful enough to also command all the waters of the Mediterranean? Although God speaks against these false teachings repeatedly, humanity – even those who worship the true God – are tempted to believe falsely.

Today in a modern version of the same error, people will say “Well, we all worship the same god.” As if the true God is just one face of some bigger divine presence available to anyone who believes in a divine being. But this bigger Divine presence is no larger than our thoughts and feelings, and so is a very small god indeed. The true God is beyond the thoughts of this world. His thoughts are not our thought, his ways are not our ways – as far as the heavens are above the earth, so are his thoughts above our thought. And yet the delusion continues. We hear variations on it: “we are all trying to get to the same place.” Or “ We all believe the same things...” “We’re all working toward the same goals” and so on. You hear it today as well, and it is the error of Jonah. He assumed that all the gods were roughly equal. The Assyrians had their gods, the folks in Tarshish had theirs, and Israel had theirs. And they each helped their own people in their own land in their own ways.

But of course, The true God – the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible – is not part of a committee, or a religious buffet. He is not part of some unnamed being without definition. The Lord God, Father Son, Holy Spirit, the Eternal Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, uncreated, is all mighty, all powerful. There is nothing beyond him. We owe him our life, and outside of Him there is no life. He is the one who commands the seas. And so when Jonah tried to run from the presence of the Lord, he found that there is nowhere outside of the Lord’s presence. Not in Tarshish, not on a boat sailing quickly to the west, not in the roughest ocean, and not in the belly of the fish. Wherever Jonah runs to, or ends up, the Lord God is there. And he is calling Jonah to speak to Nineveh with a message of repentance. Jonah is not given the option to say no to his call. He will speak the Word the Lord will have him speak. Because God does not desire the death of the sinner, but that he would turn from his evil and live. Even when he is disobedient the Lord shows love for Jonah. He appoints a fish to swallow Jonah, rather than letting him be swallowed by the depths of the sea. And we are told that the three days and three nights Jonah spends in the belly of the fish point us to the 3 days that Jesus will spend in the grave after his death and before he is raised from the dead by the glory of God the Father. The account of Jonah is filled with the grace and mercy of God. God desires to be merciful to the 120,000 Ninevites. He is merciful to the sailors who each call out to their idols – gods that can not save. He is merciful to Jonah, in keeping him safe and returning him to land so he can fulfill the Lord’s command. And he is merciful to us because his time in the deep points us to our own salvation in Jesus.

Which brings us to our Gospel – one of the shorter ones of the year, but filled with the glory of the Lord and the salvation of our God. We’ve heard Jesus turn water to wine, and heal – even from a great distance. Now, we have Jesus getting into a boat for another miracle. If you’ve ever been on a lake when a sudden storm comes up – or even s stiff breeze, you know how quickly a gentle boat ride can turn into a struggle for survival. The dividing line between life and death is a thinner line most of time than we want to admit – whether it’s on the water, driving here and there, working at a job, or just trying to stay healthy, we are surrounded by death on all sides.

For the disciples it starts out well enough. Good weather, nice day, get in, row to other side in a couple of hours. But small lakes like the sea of Galilee are known for sudden, violent storms. It doesn’t take much to whip up the water, and overcome a boat that was roughly 25 ft long and 8 ft wide. Little more than a row boat, now filled with disciples instead of the days catch of fish. It has a flat bottom so you can get into and out of it by the shore. It can carry a lot of fish. But that means it isn’t designed for stability in rough seas.

They actually found a boat from Jesus era in 1986 during a drought in Galilee. It took 12 years to stabilize the ancient wood, but it matches the description in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We’re told Jesus was sleeping in the stern or back. The boat the disciples used would have had a small back portion that was covered – it wasn’t enough to even stand up. But you could throw some ropes or cushions under it, and then kind of snake under and have a quiet covered spot to rest. This is why when the rains start and the water begins to crash over the sides, Jesus stays asleep – cozy and warm in his little cocoon. The disciples have to come and wake him. Help us! We are about to die!” Mark records them adding, “Don’t you care?” They are not only afraid for their lives, they begin to doubt Jesus love for them. They have little faith – little faith in Jesus to protect them, little faith in Jesus to calm the storm, little faith in their heavenly Father that, whether they live or die, they are in the Lord’s hands.

Jesus not only calms the sea – he rebukes the wind and sea. He tells them off. They are not allowed to harm him, or the disciples this day. And immediately, it’s all calm. In an instant, there is no threat.

And then the question: What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?

For all our insight into the way the world works, we can predict the weather to some extent, but we can’t alter or change it to any large degree. We can not make the sea obey. The tides continue going in and out according to their appointed seasons. The rains come (or not) according to God’s command, not ours. We can build reservoir’s to store the water for a time. But that still relies on the rains from heaven to fill them in the seasons which God appoints. We can transport food from great distances to solve for local shortages – fresh fruit all winter long is something kings would have envied not 200 years ago. But we still can not solve for drought if the Lord withholds the rain. We can only pray and wait for the hand of the Lord to bless us.

The ability to control the weather is next level power. Jesus has this power because Jesus is the one who was in the beginning with God when the world was created, when the foundations of the earth were laid, when morning stars sang together. Jesus commands the dawn, he tells the seas how far they may go, and they may go no farther. So for him to tell a single storm to stop on a small inland lake is no trouble at all. But it involves fundamental forces of nature that we are not used to seeing bow to the will of man. We’re used to medical miracles. We’ve all but cured leprosy, we have many diseases in our hand. We can even replace faulty organs. But the fundamental forces of nature are still beyond our grasp. Jesus doesn’t need to grab hold of them, he just needs to command them, and they obey, they yield. God power, indeed.

So, when Jesus comes and says, I have come that you may have life to the full, I have come to die – to shed my blood on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins, your sins are forgiven before my father in heaven – we should listen to such words, give them close attention, hold onto them, put them in our hearts, and build a temple in our hearts to these words of our Lord, that would bring us redemption from sin, and would save us from death and the devil.

This is what Jesus came to do – to save us from our sin, to bring us to the bosom of his heavenly Father in heaven. And we see in the Gospel that the disciples don’t even need to be delivered by a large fish. Jesus is sufficient. A word is all it takes. And this miracle recalls Jonah and the fish, and reminds us that Jesus will go into the depths of the earth – into the depths of death and Sheol themselves for our salvation. He will descend for us – it isn’t just that he commands death to back off when we are perishing – he will himself perish in order to kill death and save us. The command to the wind and sea, to rebuke them – is as nothing compared to Jesus going into death and trampling it and utterly destroying it. It’s not that death must calm or back off, it’s that death is utterly destroyed.

What sort of man is this? He is the Son of God. And it isn’t the wind and sea alone that obey him. It is life that arises at his voice, it is death that is overcome by him. And the life he offers through his word of command is given to all who believe in him. And death goes away and can not return. For it is no more.

Thanks and praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who saves us from every adversity and offers us eternal salvation. Amen.