Week 2—into the sea
You might remember last week we heard how Jonah had run from God. God called him to preach to the city of Nineveh, but Jonah went as far as he possibly could in the opposite direction, boarding a ship to Tarshish. But he soon learns that there is nowhere he can flee from God’s presence, as God sends a great storm to stop Jonah in his tracks.
While the prophet of God sleeps below the deck, the pagan sailors recognise a spiritual element to the storm. They do what Jonah should have been doing. They all call to their own god, but unsurprisingly, nothing happens. The captain of the ship, exasperated, wakes Jonah, and urges him: “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”
But something terrifies them even more than the storm itself. When they asked Jonah what work he did, he answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
It’s difficult to understand how Jonah can reconcile ‘running away from the LORD’ with ‘worshipping him’. But from his profession of faith the sailors come to recognise that the LORD God made the sea and controls it. This terrified them. Not the storm itself—but that the one God who they have not called on is behind it, and that they are caught up in his workings of judgment.
In today’s text we hear that the sea is only getting rougher. The crew has tried spiritual strategies (calling on different gods) and practical plans (throwing cargo overboard to lighten their vessel). But everything the crew has attempted has not worked. They know that there is something between Jonah and the LORD that has caused this, and they don’t want to be caught up in the consequences. So the sailors asked Jonah “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”
“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” Jonah replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”
But instead, the men did their best to row back to land. They don’t want to see anyone die, but just want to get away from this. Like Jonah, they want to get away from the Lord too. But they can’t, because the sea grew even wilder than before.
And then comes God’s mighty work. A greater work than the storm that lashed against the boat. A greater work than calming the storm. A mighty, powerful miracle: “Then they cried out to the Lord.” In the midst of trouble and danger God has given them faith. He has opened their lips to call on him. Whereas they once called on gods who had no ears to hear them and were powerless to help or save, the true God has brought them to a place to see the futility of everything they have tried. He has planted faith in the hearts of these Gentiles, who do what Jonah should have been doing himself: they cried out to the Lord—the One God who does have ears to hear, and is everywhere present, and is mighty and compassionate to save.
They cried out to the Lord: “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard.
Now, why would Jonah being thrown into the sea make a difference? Why did Jonah say to them: “Pick me up and throw me into the sea and it will become calm.”
We know and believe that God is in control of all things and upholds the universe by his powerful word (Hebrews 1). But to the ancient mythological mind, the sea was thought to be the dwelling place of evil—perhaps because of its an unpredictable, chaotic, turbulent heaving and surging, dark rolling waves unleashing ferocious power, crashing and foaming, which no human can restrain. Mark 5 comes to mind, when Jesus cast out the evil spirits from a man who lived among the tombs, which enter a herd of pigs, rush down the steep bank into the sea, and are drowned. (Mark 5:1-13).
Jonah is no evil spirit, but he has done what is evil in the sight of the Lord. By his refusal to go to Nineveh, Jonah is not only resisting God and trying to run from him—he was imposing limits on God by deciding where and when he would preach his word, and therefore who does or doesn’t have the opportunity to hear, repent and receive grace. That’s God’s business, not Jonah’s! Jonah’s plunging into the sea is perhaps symbolic of a fitting place to restrain Jonah’s evil, so that he doesn’t continue to thwart God’s plans.
But notice Jonah doesn’t just jump overboard. He says to the sailors “pick me up and throw me into the sea”. Why might this be?
This was for the sailors’ benefit. It would be an act of faith in what Jonah had told them, that things would go well for them. This is the first glimpse in the book where Jonah is thinking of others ahead of himself. He is prepared to sacrifice his own life to save those in the boat. By casting Jonah into the sea, the sailors would be making an offering to God. While it is not strictly the Old Testament substitutionary blood sacrifices, it would seem to all in the boat that by their offering up of Jonah, Jonah would perish, which would satisfy a righteous God so that Jonah’s wrongdoing would be punished and they would be freed from God’s judgment. The crew cried out to the Lord: “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.”
Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. The sailors were in awe at God’s stilling of the storm. At this they greatly feared the Lord, and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him. God, in His mission, just saved a ship full of pagan sailors, in the midst of human unbelief, confusion, and rejection…not simply only from the raging sea, but from their sins as they turned to the Lord by putting their faith in him.
This is one of the rare occasions in the Old Testament where God shows his divine favour and mercy to the Gentiles outside of Israel. God brings about his mission even after sinful humans seek to derail it. It is a foreshadowing of divine mercy to the ends of the earth and the farthest seas—peoples from all nations to receive divine blessing—which Psalm 65 speaks of:
By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness,
O God of our salvation,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas;
6 the one who by his strength established the mountains,
being girded with might;
7 who stills the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples,
8 so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs.
You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.” (Psalm 65:5-8).
Tonight’s text leads us to reflect on our life with God too. Are there times in our life when we also try to run or hide from God, fleeing from the situations he puts before us, often forfeiting peace and bearing needless pain, in the human way of charting the course of our life’s journey ourselves? Are there times where those outside of the church are ahead of us in the search for the spiritual behind the visible, material existence of daily life? When the storms of life come to us, do we tend to routinely turn to our own strategies and plans, trusting in them, rather than calling on the name of the Lord and handing our lives over into his hands? What might the storms be in our life, and what might God be wanting to teach us in them? What might God be calling us to surrender to him, for the good of others, and for our own peace and order in life—that we may go out in the morning and the evening to shout for joy at the salvation given to us? In the words of the great hymn: “Do we pass that Cross unheeding, breathing no repentant vow.”
Ah…the Cross! This episode of Jonah points us to the Cross, where God finished his plan of salvation to be the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas; even us! It is by the Cross that God has overcome the storms of evil and calmed the roaring waves that seek to lash against us and destroy us.
Jonah points us to Jesus, who said: “Whoever would save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake and for the Gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:35). We hear rings of the sailors cry to the Lord (“Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man”) in the Roman Governor Pilate’s plea to the people:
“What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” And he said, “Why? What evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!”
So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” (Matthew 27:22-24).
It was Jesus who was picked up and treated roughly not by sailors but soldiers; the innocent Jesus, the holy and righteous Jesus, the Son of God, who has all things in his hands, yet allowed the hands of sinners to arrest, beat and crucify him. It was Jesus who was cast into the sea as it were; as the high tide of false accusations crashed against him. It was Jesus, who was cast into the sea, as the wild waves of the cry of hatred: “Crucify him!” rang throughout Jerusalem. It was Jesus who was cast in the sea, drowning under the black darkness of the rolling waters of suffering and agony instead of you and me, abandoned by his Father as the nails pieced his body, and the suffering and affliction we deserved was put on him. It was Jesus who surrendered his own life; commending his life into his Father’s hands as he breathed his last on the Cross: “Into your hands I commit my spirit”.
The Cross is where God shows his grace to pagan Gentiles. The glimpse of God’s love, compassion and forgiveness to peoples from all lands seen in tonight’s text has been fulfilled in Christ to those from the farthest seas, even you and I who are here tonight. Indeed it is why we are here tonight: God’s grace to us in Christ. And so it is not the fear of punishment that is the Christian basis to return to God, but God’s dishing out of his lavish, undeserved grace and favour for Christ’s sake, who has already born the punishment for the sins of the world on his shoulders, and has overcome the storms of every evil for you, by laying down his own innocent life on the Cross.
God does not call us to be thrown into the sea. He will not let you be lost. He will not let you drown. He calls us stop running, and to stay in the boat of his church, to not be afraid with him as captain, as we listen to his word that declares you are innocent, your past put out of mind, your debt cleared, your sins taken from you and placed on Christ, your shame covered over, clothed with his own righteousness through faith. He calls us to be free from the struggle of trying to row hard against the wind, by entrusting our lives to his secure hands. As we gaze on those hands, the hands of the God of heaven who made the seas and dry land—hands punctured by iron spikes to ensure that you would not be lost to your Father in Heaven, but redeemed by the precious blood of his Son to belong to him—may you see not only a mighty God who sustains the universe by his powerful word, calling forth waves to rise and still; may you see also a compassionate and loving God, who surrendered his life for you, and for everyone you know and meet. Amen.
Pastor Tim Ebbs
St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Glenelg,
Lent 2026
