Reflection:
“No sign will be given to them except the sign of Jonah.”
The prophet Jonah delivered just about the lamest and most insincere prophetic utterance in scripture: “Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed.”This is a message he did not want to deliver precisely because he feared the people would repent, God would forgive them, and they would be spared the destruction Jonah thought they deserved. And that is exactly what happened. The people from king to servant all repented and put on sackcloth, and Jonah was furious. He is the epitome of an “angry prophet”—angry in this case at the mercy of God. Yet that is not what Jonah is remembered for. Instead, we recall that he was swallowed by a whale who carried him for three days toward the destination he had tried to avoid. And that, curiously, is the sign that Jesus offers to his gene- ration: the sign of Jonah.
It is doubtful that the crowd gathered around Jesus could make much of this cryptic prophecy—presumably a reference to the three days he would spend in the realm of death prior to his resurrection. But the prophet’s message—Repent, or face catastrophe—applies as much today as it did in Jesus’ time. Do we listen to the Jonahs in our midst?It is doubtful that the crowd gathered around Jesus could make much of this cryptic prophecy—presumably a reference to the three days he would spend in the realm of death prior to his resurrection. But the prophet’s message—Repent, or face catastrophe—applies as much today as it did in Jesus’ time. Do we listen to the Jonahs in our midst?
© Copyright Bible Diary 2019