Saved in the Storm

Midweek Lenten Service
February 24, 2010
Jonah 1:44-16

 “The Sign of Jonah: Saved in the Storm”

The Beecher tornado was the strongest of many tornadoes which ripped across Lower Michigan, Ohio and Ontario on June 8, 1953. 125 people were killed and 896 people were injured by the eight tornadoes in Lower Michigan alone. These tornadoes left a lasting impact on the people they affected. One person was Yvonne Herron, who had the following recollections:

On June 8, 1953, I was seventeen and had graduated from Beecher High School the preceding week. I still remember vividly certain images from that day: My father coming in from the front porch, describing clouds moving, seeming to stop, and reversing direction; his saying we should go to the basement. (I remember)Looking out a west window and seeing the top of a good sized tree bent to the ground. Coming up the stairs from the basement and there was nothing above ground but debris… no house, no trees, no neighbors' houses. (I remember) Seeing an elderly neighbor still in her bed but her house was gone and the bed was in the middle of the street... Going to a collection center for lost property and finding my Polaroid camera with film in it and still operable but the case was covered in tiny stones imbedded in the leather… Eventually learning that a close family friend had died when he simply went out to close his garage door… I have always thought it strange that my memory of events since June 8, 1953 has always been clear and generally precise but many personal events before that date are indistinct It is like a curtain closed that evening. Even now, 50 years later, if there is a tornado watch or warning, I cannot stay in a building if I cannot see the sky. I need to watch the color of the clouds, feel the wind direction, the air pressure, and then decide if we need to go to the basement as we did in 1953. (Yvonne’s story may be found online at http://www.crh.noaa.gov)

Yvonne Herron was saved in the storm, as was Jonah in the Scripture lesson for this evening. We’re following Jonah during our midweek Lenten worship services. Last week we heard of Jonah’s call from God to go to Ninevah and proclaim God’s judgment against it because of their wickedness. But instead of going there, Jonah booked passage on a ship headed in the opposite direction, to Tarshish. And it is there, onboard the ship, that God sends a mighty storm as a wake-up call to Jonah – literally! Hard as it is to imagine, Jonah was sleeping soundly through the fury of the storm. Being sound asleep indicated that he had shut out the world around him, as well as God’s call to go to Ninevah. As Jonah found out, and we would do well to learn from his example, “You can run, but you can’t hide.” What about us? Do we have a Tarshish in our own lives – a place that is the exact opposite of where God is calling us to go? Now as then, God will go to great lengths to get our attention. He begins gently, but if we persist in running away and disobedience, watch out for the storm that may well be brewing!

Interestingly, it’s the pagan sailors who seem to have a better understanding of this than the prophet himself! They understand what’s going on, but Jonah doesn’t. After casting lots and discerning that Jonah is the cause of this horrific storm, the sailors ask who he is and what he does. Jonah’s brief description is very illuminating: “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (Jonah 1:9). Jonah is drawing on strong images of the Lord God from the past: He is the Creator who brought order from chaos. He is the One who rescued Noah and his family from the great Flood. He is the One who delivered his people through the waters of the Red Sea. Even in the midst of the storm, even when he was running away, Jonah was mindful that his God saves those who are in peril on the sea.

What to do? It was obvious that very soon the ship and everyone on board would be lost.  Jonah tells the sailors to do the unthinkable, and throw him overboard. Even when he tells them this, they don’t do it immediately. Verse 13 tells us: “Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.” Only when there was no option available to them do they follow Jonah’s directive, and even then they pray earnestly to the Lord God for forgiveness, that they would not be held accountable for his life. Jonah is thrown into the sea, which then ceased its raging. From every indicator of what is written here in Scripture, through this experience the sailors turned to the Lord and followed Him.

Jonah was sacrificed to the waves, and they were stilled. This points us ahead to another who sacrificed his life, which also stilled the storm. Paul the apostle writes: “For our sake [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Unlike Jonah, Jesus did not run away from the work that the Father called him to do. He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). Through Jesus’ willing sacrifice, we have been delivered; saved in the midst of the storm of sin, death, and hell. Through Jesus, we are raised to new life.  God may send storms in our life today to awaken us, and call us back to himself. Those are difficult and challenging times, but it is precisely then that we turn in all our need to that Savior who gave himself for us. We cry out to Him in the midst of the storm, and He hears and answers us. And so our prayer is what we just sang in “My Faith Looks Up to Thee”:

             While life’s dark maze I tread  And griefs around me spread, 
            Be Thou my guide;
            Bid darkness turn to day, Wipe sorrow’s tears away,
            Nor let me every stray From Thee aside (stanza 3). Amen.