Based on Jonah and the Minors: Chapter 6—Cast Off
Juliette Alvey
Dear Grown-up,
Jonah and Jesus have one talent in common that few people can claim: they can sleep in a boat during a terrible storm. I can barely sleep in my comfortable bed in a sturdy house during a loud storm, let alone being tossed around in the waves with people crying out, “We’re going to perish!”
In Jonah’s case, the captain comes storming in and asks 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” (Jonah 1:6). The captain is desperate. He is willing to try anything. When the others on the boat hear that Jonah is a prophet from God, they are terrified. They ask him, “What have you done” (Jonah 1:10)? Jonah knows how to calm the storm… he needs to be thrown overboard. The shipmates really do not want to do this, but at Jonah’s insistence they agree. The sea immediately becomes calm again.
Chapter 6 in the Jonah and the Minors zine is called “Cast Off.” Have you ever felt like you were “cast off?” Sometimes when we are in the thick of life, we feel a little bit like someone threw us overboard into a turbulent sea. We may even feel like God is the one doing the throwing. Jonah being cast off the boat into the sea was not his first experience with feeling this way. Remember that God asked Jonah to leave his home and go to a place that he would surely be an outsider and unwelcome… to his enemies, the Ninevites. In this moment, Jonah must have felt cast off by God, thrown overboard into an impossible mission.
At times we feel the weight of God’s calling. God calls us into the uncomfortable places, and yet when we try to make ourselves fit in somewhere else, we feel even more out of place—like Jonah in the boat going the opposite direction. Often we feel like outsiders no matter where we go.
As grown-ups nurturing young people, we want them to feel like they fit in: accepted, loved, and never cast off. But then we hear them talk about this one group of friends that makes them feel like an outsider because of what they are wearing, and this other group who doesn’t think they’re good enough at sports, or this other group that teases them and makes them the butt of all the jokes. It is heartbreaking to hear these types of stories from young people who want so desperately to belong.
Jesus reminds us that feeling like an outsider is not an unexpected experience in this life. He says of his followers, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (John 17: 16). Jesus knows a thing or two about being cast off. John says of the Son, “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him” (John 1:10). Jesus is even rejected in his own hometown!
When Jesus is sleeping during the storm, the disciples feel cast off by him in this moment as they try to save themselves. They yell, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown” (Mark 4:38)? Notice the question they ask in the midst of their fear: “don’t you care?” When we are feeling anxious, lonely, or lost, we do not doubt that God has the power to save us. What we really want to be assured of is that the God of the wind and the waves cares.
Jesus gets up and tells the storm to be still… and all is calm. Their question is answered without a shadow of a doubt.
