Looking for signs and Nineveh

As a small child, I was a bit of a religious nerd.

I’m not sure why, but I was the oldest child, the only daughter, and our little Catholic mission parish in farm country was central to our lives. From a young age, faith intrigued me.

Case in point: I remember taking a toy — probably not a treasured stuffed animal, more likely something of my brother’s — and placing it behind a chair. Then I would talk to God. If you make this item disappear, I would tell the Almighty, then I will definitely believe in you.

Needless to say, the toy was always safely sitting behind the chair when I looked. I remained a tiny believer, albeit a disappointed one.

I chuckle when I recall this memory, and if this mystery we call God has a sense of humor, then the angels were chuckling too.

I was asking for a sign. And lately, we’ve been reading about Jesus’ warnings about asking for signs. In Luke 11:29-32, he is quite adamant: “This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.”

Jonah became a sign to the city of Nineveh; Jesus is telling the crowds that he, Jesus, is the sign, the only sign we need. And he, Jesus, is greater than Jonah, whose fabulous tale involves being swallowed by a large fish, and greater than Solomon.

Although probably not a historical character, Jonah’s story carries lessons. God asked Jonah to perform a mission — go to the pagans in the vast city of Nineveh and proclaim the true God. Understandably, Jonah’s terrified. Instead of heading for Nineveh, he boards a ship going the other direction. When the sailors on board decide that Jonah’s rebellion against God is the cause of a devastating storm, they pitch him overboard. Hence, the fish, who eventually decides he doesn’t want Jonah either and coughs him up on shore.

Jonah gets the point. He heads to Nineveh and proclaims the Lord. He becomes a sign of God.

A good deacon friend said this years ago: “You may be the only Gospel someone reads today.”

We’re called to be signs, too.

But this sign business still challenges me. The Gospels are full of the marvelous deeds of Jesus. The blind see, evil spirits are expelled, the multitudes are fed, the lepers cured. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead after days in the tomb.

Hopefully Jesus’ message of love, mercy and inclusion was attracting crowds to him. But let’s be honest — many of those crowds were attracted by the amazing stories they had heard of healing. They saw and hoped for signs and wonders.

Jesus’ incredible love and mercy propelled him toward helping those in need. Often, he would instruct the healed to tell no one. But people inevitably blabbed.

But these works also drew the crowds to hear his message. How many who listened to the Sermon on the Mount had come for miracles but stayed to hear the real message of how we are called to be the miracle, to be the sign?

It takes spiritual maturity to become the sign rather than, like a hopeful child, demanding one. We’re in the midst of 40 days to ponder that. Forty — a sacred number. The rain fell for 40 days on Noah, the Israelites spent 40 years in the wilderness. Jesus was credited with 40 days in the desert.

During our 40 days, may we seek to see how God sends us out, like Jonah, to be a sign of Christ’s limitless mercy.

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