The sign of Jonah

I have recently spent a week or so in the Book of Jonah. There is high adventure in this book: a missionary calling disastrously deferred; a crashing storm at sea; a whale of a fish who intervenes when all seems lost; and a missionary calling reissued. There is extravagant love here, too: the love of God for unlovable Nineveh; his love for unbelieving sailors; his redeeming love for a wayward missionary, and more.

It seems that Jesus was crazy about this book. Of all the prophets in the Old Testament, Jesus chose “the sign of Jonah” to represent him. “For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation,” we read (Luke 11:30; cf. Matthew 12:38ff., etc.). Jonah was going to be his “mark”; if we “get” Jonah, we might “get” Jesus, too.

What did Jesus have in mind?

Jesus must have been thinking of the parallel experience of his own tomb and resurrection: three days in the fish, three days in the earth, and then – resurrection, and a powerful mission to the world. Matthew makes the parallel explicit. “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (12:40).

Yet our Lord may have had something more in mind. The sign may refer to the experience of the complex prophet himself: elbow-to-elbow with unbelieving sailors; waking suddenly to their plight; loving the sailors enough, eventually, to cast himself into the sea in an act of reckless solidarity; and preaching at last in Nineveh – though still, it seems, he was less than sure that he wanted to.

It turns out that this prophet was a pretty ordinary man – given to occasional acts of true heroism and much small-mindedness, too. That’s the “sign” Jesus had in mind, I think. People like you. People like me. People swept up in the mission of God, for all of their complexities and occasional small-mindedness. They are not sure how.

In a way, Matthew makes this idea explicit, too. In the same chapter cited above and the very next verse, Jesus recalls Jonah’s personal message and ministry – and not only his miraculous adventure in the belly of a fish. “The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here” (12:41). Jesus seems to have the man himself in view – complex, errant, rescued, surrendered, grumpy, mostly obedient Jonah.

It is instructive to remember that Jesus offers “the sign of Jonah” as an antidote for “Pharisees and teachers of the law” who begged him for a “miraculous sign.” “He answered, ‘A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah'” (Matthew 12:38-39). Jesus was not about to wow the Pharisees with an incontrovertible display of power. All they would get, you see, is Jonah.

All they would get is a simple messenger preaching repentance and announcing Good News. All they would get is a fellow who stood by them in the storm – though he was unsure how he got there or what he would be called to do. All they would get is a man who cast himself into the waves for the sake of his weary and storm-wracked shipmates.

They would get people like you. You are “the sign of Jonah.”

And this is the way it has always been, I think. Jesus does not wow us very often with empty tombs and giant fish. That sort of sign is a singular game-changer, to be sure: the cross and the empty tomb have been given once and for all. More commonly, however, his “signs” are much quieter. They are “Jonah-proof[s]”… which look like “no proof[s] at all” (Luke 11:30, The Message). Simple obedience. Reckless surrender. Solidarity. Good News.

And Jesus himself stands behind them….