The Sign of Jonah

Jesus said, "This is an evil generation.  It seeks a sign.  But no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah."

-Luke 11: 29

In our Eucharistic lectionary during Lent, this is the gospel for today (or to be more accurate, Luke 11: 29-32).  This is a very peculiar passage that leads many to ask:  what exactly IS the sign of Jonah?!

You remember Jonah, right?  He was the young man whom God called to be a prophet, to go to the great city of Nineveh and tell them that God was fed up, that death and destruction would come to them in 40 days.  Jonah resisted God's call as long as possible, even going into the deepest, darkest corner of the bowels of a great fish in order to escape God's call.  But God would have none of it, and Jonah eventually said yes and proclaimed God's prophecy to the people, only to see their cries of repentance turn God's ear and change God's mind.  Unfortunately for Jonah, this meant that he would be labeled a false prophet, forcing him to flee and become angry with God.  The story ends with God asking the disgruntled Jonah a question:  'And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?’ (Jonah 4: 11)

So what does Jesus mean when he tells the crowd following him that no sign will be given except the sign of a young man who resisted God's call, preached a prophecy that was not fulfilled, and ended up being angry at God?  The 'sign' of Jonah isn't really a sign at all when we think about it, rather it is more like an anti-sign.  It points us toward the journey Jonah went on.  It points us in the direction of surrendering ourselves into the belly of darkness before we can know what is essential.  You see, Jonah thought he was in control.  He did not want to surrender to God's call for him.  Often times we feel the same way.  Jesus is insisting that, for Jonah (and us), the spiritual journey is more about giving up control than taking control.  

Our journey of faith is like leaping out into the water.  When we take that leap out into the unknown we have an experience with God, a lived experience.  Yet that experience, like Jonah's, is not fully understood until after the fact.  The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, 'Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.'  Jonah only knew what God was doing in his life until AFTER emerging from the belly of the fish.  He had no message at all to give until he had first endured the journey, the darkness, the trials.  He tried to avoid them, tried to avoid God, but eventually the reluctant prophet surrendered his own will to God's.

There is a reason Jonah is my favorite prophet:  it's precisely because he didn't want to be one!  What is the sign of Jonah?  It is the reluctance   It is the feeling that our own lives are within our own control.  It is the insistence that we can do it all on our own.  Only after the fact, after the trials and difficulties, after spending the night in the belly of the beast, do we find that, in fact, we are God's, and that God's presence is ever with us, God's guiding hand has always been and will always be there.  

Jonah's story is our story.  It is the story of someone who did not believe he was capable of doing something so massive, so great as being a prophet of God.  Jesus' generation did not see God's hand at work until after Jesus was gone.  Will your eyes and hearts be open this Lent to hear and see God in your life, calling you to go to your own Nineveh?  Do not wait for Easter's dawn to find out!  Do not wait until you look back on this season and wish you said yes to something God was calling you toward.  Leap out into the water!