Christchurch Parish News, July 2016
If someone were to ask you, ‘Who are you?’, how would you answer?
Last month we left the sailors and Jonah having just drawn lots, the storm raging around them threatening to destroy the ship. As you’ll know from the story, the lot falls on Jonah, thereby firmly pointing the finger of blame at him for the mess they’re in. The sailors are left in no doubt that it is Jonah who is responsible for their being suddenly overwhelmed by such an almighty (!) tempest. As I pointed out last time, were we in the position of the sailors, we would most likely at this point cut to the chase and ask Jonah bluntly what it was that he had actually done. The sailors instead, however, ask him different questions that at first glance seem curiously indirect, questions all to do with establishing Jonah’s identity, ‘What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?’ They want to find out not what he’s done but who he is.
The sailors need to know his identity because they need to establish which god Jonah has upset. After all there were so many gods he could have offended. In the polytheistic world of the lands around the Mediterranean in the centuries before the birth of Christ, there were a plethora of gods on the scene, governing all different aspects of everyday life. There were gods and goddesses for your job, be you a shepherd or a hunter; for different aspects of nature, be it the rivers, forests or mountains; and for different countries and peoples, be you an Egyptian or a Phoenician, for example. Over each segmented aspect of life, there ruled a god or goddess to whom you were accountable and to whom you offered worship if you knew what was good for you. So prior to finding out what Jonah had done, the sailors need to know which gods they’re dealing with. For example, was it the god that governed Jonah’s job, or was it the one that governed his country or his people? Tell us who your gods are Jonah, and we’ll know where we are and how to proceed.
But the answer they get reveals that they’re dealing with a god of an entirely different order. It’s not any of these other gods that Jonah has offended, for he answers, “‘I am a Hebrew … I worship the LORD’”
It’s striking how Jonah identifies himself. ‘I am a Hebrew,’ he says. And as if to answer the question, ‘What’s a Hebrew?’, Jonah continues, ‘I worship the LORD’. Amazing! Imagine answering questions raised about your identity by boldly stating first and foremost who it is that you worship. Who are you? someone asks. And you reply, ‘I am a Christian. I worship Jesus Christ.’ For myself, I’m not sure I would naturally answer that way. I’d be much more likely to answer questions about who I am in terms of my family, my job, where I was born, where I live now and, depending on whom I was talking to, I might conceivably mention that I worshipped at the Priory. Ha! I’d feel OK saying where I worshipped – I worship at the Priory – but I’d be very unlikely to say whom I worshipped; I would be unlikely to say that I was a Christian and that I worshipped Jesus Christ. Not off the bat. Not straight away. Maybe after I’d got to know the person asking me the question a bit better – you know, a decade or so later.
But not Jonah. Bam! ‘I am a Hebrew. I worship the LORD.’ Talk about cutting to the chase! I’m one of those people, Jonah is saying, who worship the one God, who is God of all of life, every aspect of it. Like every other devout Israelite, Jonah would have recited the Shema, the core Jewish prayer multiple times a day. It goes like this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’ (Deut 6:4) Note what the Shema says, The LORD is one. This prayer is saying that every aspect of our lives is lived in relationship with this one God, the LORD. No messing around with the other gods, much as you might be tempted to.
And just in case the poor mariners (or us readers) weren’t aware of the extravagant claims these Hebrews made for their god, Jonah proceeds to state one of the key characteristics of this One God: namely, he is ‘the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land’. In other words, everything. This is so important to understand. For Jews of the time that the story of Jonah is set, and continuing into the first century after the birth of Jesus, the God of Israel was understood as having these two key characteristics. The identity of the LORD consisted in him being a) creator and b) sovereign. Creator of all that is. Sovereign over all that is.
For a moment, let me step out of the story of Jonah and connect what was said about the God of the Israelites, the LORD, with some of the things that were said very early on about Jesus; for example, the stories about him calming the storm on the sea of Galilee. These stories are making massive theological claims about Jesus’ identity. For he is being depicted in the gospel accounts as being sovereign over all of creation; Jesus commands, creation obeys. The New Testament writers are attributing to Jesus characteristics which traditionally were understood to belong properly only to the God of Israel. It is one of the many ways the writers of the gospels are saying that Jesus’ identity is that of the God of Israel. Extraordinary statements, blasphemous even, for devout Jews to have written unless something utterly singular had happened to turn their worldview upside down.
But back to the story of Jonah. In the story so far it has all been building up to this point where Jonah makes his declaration. Jonah worships the LORD, who is creator of all, and yes, who is also sovereign over everything. That ‘everything’ includes the fate of the Ninevites, whom God loves but Jonah loathes; it includes the storm that’s overwhelming the ship; it includes the seemingly random drawing of lots that has singled out Jonah; and, yes, it includes, too, the fate of the sailors, aboard their storm-tossed vessel, which is shipping water fast, who are now even more afraid than ever and say to Jonah, “‘What is this that you have done!’ For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD.”
What do they do? What would you do? These are questions, amongst others, that I’ll be discussing next month. But for now, I bring you back to some questions that this passage has raised for us all (and I very much include myself in this): firstly, the ones to do with identity. If someone were to ask you, ‘Who are you?’, how would you answer? How long would it take you to get to saying that you’re a Christian and that you worship Jesus Christ? Would you even think to say that or does the prospect leave you feeling distinctly uncomfortable? And the second group of questions are to do with the sovereignty of the One God (remember the hymn we sing, ‘One Church, One Faith, One Lord’?). Do we worship Jesus as Lord of all aspects of our lives, both public and private? Or is it that when it comes to some parts of our everyday living, there are other “gods” we turn to? If so, what might they be and what holds us back from acknowledging Jesus as Lord for these parts of our lives as well and delighting in the fact?