21 February 2018
Wednesday of the First Week in Lent
Having taught us the “language” of our true homeland, Jesus begins to prepare us further by challenging us to deeper faith: the journey home will be marked with signs, but not those we can see with the eyes of our flesh. “We walk by faith, not by sight,” St. Paul famously wrote (2 Cor. 5:7) The people to which Jesus spoke were demanding signs, proof that would convince them intellectually that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. Their faith, in other words, came with conditions, which revealed to Jesus that they, truly, had no love for God because love requires trust, and they had none: hence they were evil. They loved the comforts of their way of life such that they were unwilling to take that great trust-fall that is faith, and so Jesus indeed promises them a sign, and a strange one at that: the sign of Jonah.
Jonah was sent by God to Nineveh, to warn the great city of its imminent destruction by God should they ignore the call to repent. They repented, and they were spared. Just as Jonah was the sign of repentance and mercy to the Ninevites, Jesus would be so for the people to whom He preached: repentance is at the core of His message, and those who heed it are spared destruction not by God’s hand, but as the natural consequence of sin. As Jonah was in the whale, Jesus would be swallowed up by the earth for three days and would emerge alive and well.
He goes further, saying that in the end, at the time of judgement, the Queen of Sheba will rise along with those to whom Jesus preached and condemn them, for she—a foreigner and pagan!—came from far off just to hear the fabled wisdom of Solomon, the great king and son of David. Yet the evil generation stood before the King of Heaven, hearing Wisdom Incarnate, who was also the Son of David, and they refused to heed Him: indeed “there is something greater than Solomon here!” The men of Nineveh would rise and condemn them as well, because they listened to Jonah and repented: the evil generation is hearing the call to repentance from God Himself and they will not listen! It is one thing for God to send a prophet, yet “there is something greater than Jonah here,” for God has sent His own Son.
But it takes a greater faith to believe in Jesus than it does to believe a prophet: a prophet claims to carry a message from God, but he himself makes no other claims. Yet Jesus is both message and messenger: He is the Word of God and is thus the message God sends, as well as the one delivering it. To deliver us, Jesus delivers Himself.
Out here in the desert wastes countless mirages distract and deceive us; so often we lick sand thinking it to be water, and subsequently wonder why we are so thirsty. The evil generation demanded the satisfaction of their eyes before they would listen to Jesus, before they would dare let their hearts believe. Will we be so hard of heart so as to demand proof for our eyes before we will listen to Jesus and His call to repentance? Will we follow the Way home, listen to His Truth, and receive the Life He has given, listening to His voice (John 10:27) even if we cannot see where He is leading us?