A Difficult Crowd: We were a great crowd, that day, gathering to see Jesus. There was talk of signs and wonders and there were some there who mocked and challenged him to test what a miracle worker he was and to see what was on offer for them. Then he turned and spoke directly to those people, ‘This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.’
The People of Nineveh
I stood still, reflecting for a moment on that sign. In my imagination I saw the prophet, indignant and resentful. Those people who lived in the great city of Nineveh were not God’s people and they were not good people. They were the people who had no respect for the God of Israel. These alien people were arrogant: they did not deserve the warning.
And yet the Lord had commanded the prophet Jonah to go and warn them about the doom coming to them. His command to the prophet was so insistent that Jonah’s attempt to flee the task by sea finished in his being thrown from the storm-tossed ship and swallowed whole by a whale. The hapless sailors were aware that someone was to blame for provoking the storm. They were afraid to jettison Jonah, so he offered his life to save them all.
The Response to Jonah
From deep inside the whale Jonah prayed to the Lord for three days and three nights. The Lord heard him, and the whale vomited the prophet onto the shore: so now he obeyed God and went on to warn the people of Nineveh as he was told to do.
He did not expect them to repent. Perhaps he could not believe that these proud people would do so, but repent they did, every man, woman, child and beast, from the king down, in sackcloth and ashes, fasting and praying.
‘This Generation’
So, I wondered, why was it that Jesus said that these ‘people of Nineveh (would) rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it,’ when they had been under God’s judgment? He gave us the answer, reminding us that they had ‘repented at the proclamation of Jonah.’
Because they had listened and turned to God speaking through the words of his prophet Jonah, these gentiles would condemn those of our people who would not hear the Lord. So too, the gentile Queen of Sheba who came from the South, ‘from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon,’ would condemn them for ignoring the One who was far wiser than Solomon.
Jesus went on to note that there is something greater than Solomon and something greater than Jonah here. In time I came to see and believe in that greatness, in the Son of God and in the greatest sign, the ‘sign of Jonah,’ which the disciples witnessed.
The Sign of Jonah
That sign was prefigured by the fate of Jonah, who was buried in the whale for three days, where the terrible darkness of the sea was intensified in the darkness of the belly of the whale, like the darkness of the tomb, and by his return to life when the creature hurled him back onto dry land.
In speaking of the sign of Jonah Jesus did give us a sign, The sign is darkness and death, and it is his resurrection. For those of us who saw that sign and did respond with faith it gave us life in union with him.
Lovely reflection Debra. Thank you.
Thanks for the analogy of Jonah in the belly of the whale and his return to our death and resurrection of our soul once we repent to the Lord and change our lives to listen and follow God.