As
we continue our series in Jonah this week we come to the place in the story
where God hurls a great storm upon the sea.
The crew of the ship are doing everything they can to rescue their boat,
and their lives. This is no natural
tempest the captain begins to realize.
This is something entirely different – something otherworldly. Someone on board is the cause of all this,
and he was going to find out who and why.
When the captain descended to the
darkest interior of the ship he found the slumbering Jonah wrapped in a warm
blanket. “How can you sleep through all
this?” the captain demanded. “Get up now
and pray to your God, maybe he can help us.”
But as if to demonstrate the very
meaning of irony, the prophet, called to be the voice of God, was silent, even as
the sea roared all the louder. So the
sailors, who had now abandoned every natural means of saving themselves,
gathered down below and cast lots in hopes of divining the cause of their
troubles. The lot, as we all know, fell
on Jonah.
Every eye gazed upon the one who was
causing him such grief. “Who are
you? What do you do for a living? Where do you come from? Who are your people?” they all demand at
once.
“I am a Hebrew,” Jonah calmly
replied. And in a second act of
unashamed irony declared, “I fear YHWH, God of heaven who made the sea and the
land.”
In Hebrew the word yare can
be translated “to fear,” like when Jonah says, “I fear YHWH, God of
heaven. The word yare can also be
translated “to worship.” A point which I
suspect the author of Jonah wanted us to recognize, as we can also read Jonah’s
declaration as, “I worship YHWH, God of heaven.” In either case we question the truth of
Jonah’s declaration.
Does
he truly fear God? Does he truly worship
God?
If he did, he would be obedient, wouldn’t he?
If he did he would pray and save himself and his fellow travelers. If he did he would not lie sleeping while the
storm threatened to sink the ship.
It is easy to judge Jonah here. But then again, how many times have I
declared myself a Christian (a Christ One) or a follower of Jesus, and then
acted in obviously contradictory ways? How
many times have I worshiped on a Sunday morning, declaring God’s praises in
bold ways, and then left the building only to gossip about someone at church,
or get angry at a jerk on the highway, or lose my temper with my son? And then there is disobedience that is too
personal to share in a blog.
Let’s be honest, our Christian lives
are full of contradiction. Let’s not
excuse it, but let us not pretend it isn’t there, either. I want to own that contradiction, recognize
it, name it, and then seek each and every day to bring what I say I believe in
line with the way I live it out.
For I am a Christian. I fear and worship YHWH, God of heaven who made
the sea and the land.
-A
www.knoxmidland.ca
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