Go!

21 July 2025  Matthew 12:38-42

“An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” Matthew 12:39

The “Sign of the prophet Jonah” is a pretty complex sign.

Jesus used it to refer to his passion and resurrection (cf. Matthew 12:40), but He knew that it went much farther than that. The Scribes and Pharisees knew it, too, and it made them plenty uncomfortable.

Jonah was the only prophet who said NO to his commission. God told him to go to Nineveh, the largest city of the dreaded Assyrians, and so Jonah booked passage on a ship going to Tarshish, exactly the opposite way. A storm arose, and when the crew found out that Jonah was aboard, who had said NO to a divine commission, they threw him overboard and he was swallowed by a great fish. It is often overlooked that Jonah was happy in the fish, sang his famous psalm of deliverance from inside the fish: “Thank God! The storm is over, and I don’t have to go to Tarshish! I am snug and safe inside this fish, and I can stay here forever” (cf. Jonah 2:3-9).

God, of course, had other plans. Jonah was promptly barfed back onto the beach, and then went slouching off to Nineveh, the most reluctant prophet in all Israel. As soon as Jonah entered the suburbs of Nineveh he did what he was told, and began announcing the wrath of God to come, whereupon all the Ninevites, from the king down, repented in sackcloth and ashes, and God “changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it” (3:10).

Jonah had become the first and only successful Hebrew prophet. The people actually repented at his word, but of course Jonah was furious about that. If he had gone to all this trouble, he wanted the Ninevites destroyed, just like God said. He went to the edge of town to pout (4:5).

God then made a bush grow up overnight which provided some lovely shade for Jonah, and the prophet thought God was trying to make it up to him. The next night, however, God made the bush wither, which infuriated Jonah even more. “Kill me, why don’t you!? Just kill me and stop making my life your own little private joke” (cf. 4:3, 4:9).

Then God said, “Jonah, you’re all worked up over that bush; but you didn’t plant it. You didn’t tend and water it. You didn’t make it grow. There are 120,000 people in Nineveh, and I made them all. I made them all grow, them and their animals, too. They are lost, so lost that they don’t know their right from their left about anything that really matters. Do you understand now why I care so much about them? Do you understand why I don’t want them to suffer just so you can be right? Jonah?” (cf. 4:10-11).

And that’s how the story ends – God pleading with his reluctant prophet on behalf of all the non-believers of a great city, while Jonah sulks, wrapped up in his own self-pity.

The sign of Jonah proclaimed by Jesus was saying to the Scribes and Pharisees, shouting to them as it shouts to the Church: “There are lost people out there whom you’re supposed to go see. God made them all, God loves them all, just the same as He loves you. So go! For God’s sake, for their sake, for your sake, GO!” It is a message very unsettling to people who want the peace of religion very much, but not so much the peace that passes understanding.

The burden many churches bear is that we proclaim a Good News that for many members is neither new nor good. It is too new, too good. Terribly good. It is a disturbing question, alright: “Should I not be concerned about that great city, in which there are so many people, who do not know their right hand from their left. Jonah? Are you there?”

Are you?