The Sign of Jonah

[Note: A reader wrote and asked where to find the scriptures of the day that I write about. I apologize for not mentioning it sooner! I follow the Catholic lectionary which you can access at https://bible.usccb.org/. From there you can look at the day’s scripture readings or check out the calendar to find any day of the year. Thanks for asking, Colleen!]

Most of us heard the story of Jonah when we were growing up. It’s probably one of the most popular kids’ stories. Yet if I asked you, “What does the Jonah story mean?” Most of us would likely shrug our shoulders and say, “I’m not really sure…”

Jonah is the old testament prophet who was told by God to go to Nineveh and preach repentance to the people there. The people of Nineveh had supposedly gone way astray.

Jonah, however, had no intention to do as God asked and high-tailed it in the other direction. Alas, however, he gets thrown overboard by the crew of the ship he’s on, is swallowed by a big fish and gets spit out on the shore of Nineveh three days later. So he relents and does as God asks! There’s more to the story than that, but we’ll stop there for today.

In the gospel today, Jesus is fielding questions from the crowd, and they ask him for a “sign.” I am guessing that they wanted to know if he was legit, and if he gave them a sign, they’d get on board.

Jesus responds with a cryptic, “No sign will be given except the sign of Jonah. And just as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so, too, will the Son of Humanity be to this generation.”

OK, so it’s probably important to understand Jonah…

David Benjamin Blower wrote a book called Sympathy for Jonah: Reflections on Humiliation, Terror and the Politics of Enemy-Love (Resource Publications) and in it says that we have fundamentally misunderstood Jonah. We focused on the whale and the miraculous instead of focusing on Nineveh. And we focused on Jonah being moody or reluctant versus exploring what he was being asked to do.

Blower reminds us that the Assyrian Empire (of which Nineveh was the capital) was a particularly cruel empire – especially in terms of its treatment of conquered peoples. They were militaristic occupiers who took over lands, used the resources, displaced peoples and used violence against any dissenters.

Many of the history books tended to focus on the sexual practices happening there, but these were really not the “main story” of Nineveh. Blower brings us back to the reality of Nineveh as violent empire with some of the sexual practices being a symptom of empire. To help us get a “feel” for what Assyria and Nineveh were really like, he suggests that it was more like Nazi Germany during World War II. Now think for a moment what God was asking Jonah to do.

As I was writing this, I reflected on the headlines in the news with the death of Alexei Navalny – the political opponent of Vladimir Putin – who recently died in jail. I read about people who are being arrested for being at vigils or even for placing flowers to mark Navalny’s death. What if God asked me to go to Moscow and preach to the leaders of the government to “change their ways.” Would I willingly say, “Sure, put me on the next plane!” 

Or what if, back in 2017, God asked you to go to Charlottesville, VA, during the “Unite the Right” rally and share a message of nonviolence and repentance to the people who gathered there. Would you immediately hop on a bus?

God was asking Jonah to do something very difficult and to do it with people that Jonah was likely afraid of and did not believe could change.

Who would those groups be for you? What people would God send you to that you would think, “Why bother? These are horrible, uncaring people. They will never change…” Maybe it’s a relative. Maybe it’s a specific group.

Yet, ultimately, Jonah does what he is asked and the people of Nineveh change. And the true “sign” of Jonah is that God can transform any reality – even the most violent, corrupt and seemingly immovable. Furthermore, the story of Jonah offers us a vision of the persistence and hope required to transform the forces of empire through nonviolence – forces that we ourselves face in today’s world.

When I think about Jonah’s message to Nineveh, I have to think that he was calling them to turn away from the militarism, environmental destruction, economic exploitation and violence that are so characteristic of empire – forces which prophets like Marin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Winona LaDuke, Grace Lee Boggs and so many other have told us to change. To what extent have we heeded their call?

On Ash Wednesday, Rev. Celie gave a great homily and referenced the story of Jonah related to not giving up hope that humanity can change (or that we, ourselves, can change).  The sign of Jonah is that we can and must transform our lives. Jesus, like Jonah, marches into the belly of the beast unarmed and proclaims that another way is possible to be family to each other. Jonah’s witness is public, as was Jesus,’ and so must be ours. We can’t just privately “believe” that change is possible. We’re asked to bear witness to it in the world. And sometimes that is very scary and takes us to places we would prefer not to go.

Whatever forms of witness that you are engaged in these days, let the sign of Jonah be a sign of hope for you and for us to not give up on our efforts to believe that people can change, groups can change and governments can change. But they will require the courage of our continued efforts without knowing the final outcome.