Readings:
Jonah 3:1-10; Psalm 51; Luke 11:29-32
The word of Yahweh was addressed a second time to Jonah: ‘Up’, he said. “Go to Nineveh, the great city and preach to them… Jonah went into the city… he preached in these words, ‘Only forty days more and Nineveh is going to be destroyed’. And the people of Nineveh believed in God: they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. The news reached the king of Nineveh, who rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth and sat down in ashes. A proclamation was then promulgated throughout Nineveh… Men and beasts, herds and flocks, are to taste nothing; they must not eat, they must not drink water. All are to put on sackcloth and call on God with all their might. Who knows if God will not change his mind and relent?’… God saw their efforts to renounce their evil behaviour. And God relented: he did not inflict on them the disaster which he had threatened.
Jonah 3:1, 2, 4-10
Jesus said, ‘This is a wicked generation; it is asking for a sign. The only sign it will be given is the sign of Jonah… On Judgment day the men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation and condemn it, because when Jonah preached they repented; and there is something greater than Jonah here.‘
Luke 11:29, 30, 32
Jonah’s prophecy is a witty and comic commentary on the contrast between the mercy of God for all creation on the one hand, and the cowardice, narrowness and harshness of God’s chosen people, personified in Jonah, on the other.
God calls the prophet Jonah to preach to Nineveh, a powerful and cruel pagan neighbour. Jonah responds by taking a ship in the opposite direction. The ship is hit by a storm. The pagan sailors pray for deliverance: meanwhile, God’s chosen one is asleep in the hold! Eventually, Jonah admits that his disobedience is the cause of the disaster. The sailors reluctantly cast him overboard and Jonah ends up in the great fish, which conveniently delivers him to Nineveh, many hundreds of miles inland. He preaches and the Ninevites repent, even the animals fasting. God relents and does not destroy the city. Jonah is bitterly disappointed, but hoping God might revert to his original plan, Jonah sits under the shade of a castor-oil plant on a hillside overlooking the city, awaiting the destruction of the evil empire. He sits there overnight, but in the morning the plant has withered and Jonah suffers misery next day from scorching wind and burning sun, and begs for death. The prophecy ends with God saying to Jonah, You are only upset about a castor-oil plant, which cost you no labour, which you did not make to grow… Am I not to feel sorry for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than 120,000 who cannot tell their right hand from their left, to say nothing of the animals?’
In the Gospel Jesus denounces the Jews for looking for signs, assuring them that the only sign to be given is the sign that was given to Jonah.
We are still looking for signs-the dramatic healing, apparitions, whirling sun and so on. The real sign, the miracle, is not in these external happenings, but in the inner conversion of mind and heart, as happened with the Ninevites, through Jonah’s preaching.
Prayer
Deliver us, Lord, from triumphalism in all its forms. Whenever we encounter anyone of a different faith, or of no faith, help us to tread warily and reverently, for you have been there before us and your living Spirit is in every heart. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.