Job 38:1-18, 31-33; Matthew 8:23-27
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus’ disciples say two things: “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” And, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?”
Both of these statements are important, and not just for Jesus’ original followers, but also for followers in every era. Both are important for you and for me. Let’s take the latter one first: “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?”
To this point in St. Matthew’s gospel story, Jesus has demonstrated his heavenly power by teaching and healing.
The teaching took place on an unnamed mountain where Jesus took his disciples so that he might impart to them the shape of God’s coming kingdom. It included instruction that is now contained in some of our most-taught and most-beloved parts of scripture: the Beatitudes (or “blesseds); the teaching on sincere and authentic almsgiving, fasting, and prayer; his urging that his followers not worry about anything but understand that God will provide for them just as God provides for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air; and the importance of both hearing and doing.
His disciples already knew that their master was a teacher who taught with divine authority. No surprise, we say, for he is the Only Beloved Son of Almighty God. But maybe his disciples haven’t yet quite figured that out.
They also witnessed his power to heal, just as we heard in last week’s gospel reading that told us about his healing of a leper and then, right after, the servant of a centurion … and that Jesus’ desire to heal transcended the accepted boundaries of both ritual purity and imperial politics. Not long after, when visiting Peter’s home, he healed Peter’s mother-in-law, and many more who then came to the home, precisely because they too wanted healing. It seemed as if there were no bounds limiting Jesus’ power to heal.
The news spread quickly that he taught with authority, and that he was a healer with power not only over disease but also over demons and unclean spirits (in spite of Jesus’ orders to keep things quiet). Everyone knew something about Jesus. Meanwhile, those closest to him — his hand-picked disciples — had begun to comprehend that Jesus was much more than an authoritative teacher and heavenly-gifted healer, as remarkable as those roles might be.
In today’s episode, they get what we might call the “height” of Jesus’ identity. While they were together in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, a great wind came up, producing dangerous waves. They were at risk of being swamped; their lives were in peril. They cried out to Jesus, who was calmly asleep in the storm-tossed boat. He awoke, rebuked the winds and the sea, and the danger simply vanished. Jesus made everything calm.
The disciples’ response? “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” I think they know the answer. They don’t have to say it. By demonstrating his power over the forces of nature, Jesus shows that he is truly divine. Like Almighty God, the Creator of all that exists, Jesus has power over creation itself. Jesus, the man from Nazareth, is also God from heaven.
Switching back to our First Lesson for today — God likewise emphasized God’s majesty to Job. Job had suffered tremendous hardship, devastating affliction. He had lost his livestock, his servants, and his children — all died tragically. And then he lost his health. Some friends came to visit him. From them he got bad spiritual advice: they advised him that he needed to repent, for surely all this suffering was the consequence of his sin.
Job refused to repent. He insisted that he had done nothing to merit such punishment, nothing to deserve such misery.
His embittered wife had counselled him to curse God. Perhaps she knew something that he did not know — that God had got lured into a bet with Satan over Job’s faithfulness. God had handed Job over for Satan to torment him, but only on the condition that Satan not deprive Job of his life.
For his part, Job refused to curse God … but he also wanted an interview with God, so that he might reason with the One who created him and who had permitted him to suffer so terribly. Job wanted answers for the abject misery that he suffered.
In today’s First Lesson, we hear what God has to say in response to Job’s request for justice. It wasn’t the “reasoning” that Job sought. Instead Job got a thunderous verbal barrage delivered by the Master of the universe, who governs the full scope of creation, from the dynamics of inter-stellar space to the mysterious depths of the sea; whose knowledge and wisdom utterly humbles Job, and you, and me, and every other creature.
The God that Job gets in response to his desperate plea is naked in divine majesty, unbounded by the laws of physics or even by the ethical Law that God-the-divine-self had given. Job received no reasoning, no good news in response to his soul-destroying personal plight.
That brings us to the other thing that the disciples cried out in the storm-tossed boat in today’s Gospel Lesson: “Lord, save us! We are perishing!”
The fact that Jesus has command over creation certainly prompts wonder. That he has the same authority and power as the Creator of the Universe inspires awe, even fear. But does he take note of our plight? Does he care about you and me? Does he love us with a love that overcomes our fear, our doubt, our unloveliness, even our rejection of God and righteousness? Is there any balm to soothe our woes, any remedy for our sin-sick souls?
Let’s hear what Job eventually says: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted … I have uttered things that I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Job confesses that his demand for “reasoning” was “out of bounds.” He admits that he had no business requesting such a conversation with God. It looks as if he’s simply caving in.
But wait. In the midst of his misery and the bad advice that he gets from others, Job also declares, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” Job had already lived through the kind of trauma that Jesus’ disciples will soon face, as the opposition to Jesus grows to ominous proportions.
Job lives by faith.
That’s why Jesus’ first word in response to his disciples’ desperate cry for help is a question: “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Only then does Jesus exercise his heavenly power to rescue his disciples from deadly circumstances.
You know, maybe we don’t know the dimensions of our faith until those dimensions are pulled and tugged and stretched … perhaps to the point of breaking. Maybe faith isn’t really personal, claimed faith until it has opportunity to show itself in a time of severe testing.
But apart from the Saviour, there is no faith at all. Job was granted an audience with God as the Master of universe, naked in divine majesty. What Job and the disciples need — what you and I need! — is God-clothed as the Redeemer of all. In the face of life’s terrible uncertainty, we need God incarnated as Saviour, who by sheer grace creates in us the certainty of faith.
Jesus is God-with-me. Jesus is the one who joins me in my humble ship, battered by the wind and the waves. He surprises me time and again, propelling me and the church I serve to new shores of mission, typically dislocating my own initiatives, inevitably stripping me of my resources … and in their place giving me the ability to trust in God, our heavenly Father.
Dear friends in Christ: sail on. Your ship is secure. Peace be with you all.
— Pastor Clifford Reinhardt