No sign will be given Beyond What Is Already Known

In the documentary July ’64 (about the uprisings in Rochester), there is an interview with the civil rights leader, Minister Franklin Florence. In that interview, he is asked what is needed in Rochester to address the inequalities that existed for Black and Brown communities. He says, quite simply, “Jobs, education and housing.” Period.

In the racial justice circles that I move in, I often hear of a deep tiredness and frustration expressed by people of color who KEEP getting asked, “What is needed in the community to help communities of color move forward?” The answer remains the same: Jobs, Education and Housing! Yet we’ve had countless studies, surveys, task forces and work groups to keep researching what was clearly named back in the 1960’s (and even further back than that). And they keep pointing back to three basic things that need to change: jobs, education and housing.

I get a sense that Jesus shares this kind of frustration in today’s reading.

In Mt 12, we hear that “some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.'” He is being asked, yet again, to show them something that will “convince” them that what he is saying and doing is authentic.  His testimony and lived experience are not enough. His prior actions are not enough. They want another committee, research proposal or task force!

Doubters always want more. And this is tiring.

So he says some strong words to them, “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.”

It seems, then, that to understand Jesus we must also understand Jonah.

Like so many stories in the bible, we could say a whole lot about the story of Jonah. The part I will focus on here, however, is the story of Jonah’s transformation.

Jonah was told by God to go to Nineveh and preach to the people. He willfully heads in the opposite direction and is ultimately thrown overboard by the people on the boat. He is “swallowed by a great fish,” and, after 3 days and nights, is spit out on the shore of Nineveh. When Jonah arrives there, he decides to align himself with what has ALREADY been revealed to him and does what he was instructed to do.

I tend to think that Jesus told this story to the scribes and Pharisees because he was asking them to go through the same process as Jonah. They were out of alignment with God’s plan and were being offered a way to get back in alignment. This alignment, however, required a rightsizing of society and a restructuring of relationships.

But they were unwilling to let go of their own certainty, position, power or privilege in order to do so, and Jesus was frustrated and disappointed with them. He knew that without this fundamental change of heart (metanoia) oppressive structures would continue, injustice would continue and suffering would continue. Yet they wanted more “evidence.”

Let’s pause here just for a minute to check in with ourselves. We may get in touch with relationships that we’re in where we feel like Jesus. Maybe it’s about race or some other oppressive structure. Maybe it’s about someone else’s harmful behavior (like an addiction) that they just can’t release. Maybe it’s about the climate crisis that we’re in. We just cannot understand why people will keep doing what they are doing in spite of the evidence.

But we also may want to reflect on situations where we are like the scribes and Pharisees. Maybe there is a re-alignment that we have been refusing these days. We keep asking God or others for “more evidence” that we should change (when we already have enough evidence). Or maybe we’re heading in the opposite direction to what is being asked of us.

Change and realignment require release and trust.

In her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor says, “I always wondered why it took “three days” for significant things to happen in the Bible–Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale, Jesus spent three days in the tomb, Paul spent three days blind in Damascus–and now I know. From earliest times, people learned that was how long they had to wait in the dark before the sliver of the new moon appeared in the sky.”

For three days each month, ancient peoples had to walk in the dark and trust. This mirrors our spiritual walk as we try to embrace change and realign ourselves with the divine presence in the world. There is almost always a scary moment between leaving what was known and familiar (even if it wasn’t that great to begin with) and our arriving at some new territory. This transition can be even scarier if there is something that we must release or give up that we have built our life around (like relationships or money or power or access). And while it may not always be so easy to discern what the divine is asking of us in the world, we all could probably name a few actions that would bring us closer into alignment with what we know to be true down deep.

This week maybe we can keep listening closely for the invitations to get into alignment and use Jonah as a teaching story for our faith walk.