Luke 11:29-32
I drowned once. We were on a mission trip in Guatemala, and I had waded into rough surf to pull one of our youth group members out of a wave that had knocked him down. I know you should never turn your back on the ocean, but at that moment, I did. The next wave knocked me down, dislocated my shoulder, and pulled me under and out from shore. Surrounded by water that was roiling around me, unable to sense up from down, and knowing I was releasing on my last breath, I commended myself to God and apologized to my wife in my heart for leaving this life too soon. The light grew brighter, and my vision faded…
Luckily, another one of the youths saw me in trouble, dove into the surf, and wrapped me in a bear hug. His weight, with mine, was enough to pull us both down to the sand and allow others to get us up and out of the water. I could draw the next breath of a life I had said farewell to only moments before. Soon, my shoulder was back in its socket, and I called the day’s swimming to a close. At that moment, I received my “sign of Jonah.”
Jonah’s story of being in the belly of the fish is often undersold in our imagination. He was fleeing from God’s command to speak to his mortal enemies, the Ninevites. He committed himself to drowning in the stormy sea rather than embracing God’s prophetic direction. He was willing to die, to be digested, to be nothing. Instead, in the belly of the fish, he found a form of redemption, or at least renewal. Spewed up onto a beach not far from Nineveh, he fulfills his call and still struggles with the success of its impact. Salvation comes to people he doesn’t want to see saved!
When the crowds around him are haranguing Jesus to produce signs and proofs of his divine call and mission, his frustration erupts in this diatribe about Jonah and the Queen of the South. Jesus reminds the crowd that the people of Nineveh heard the prophet’s call and repented as a whole…and were forgiven and spared from destruction. Jesus invokes the story of the Candace of Ethiopia traveling to meet Solomon to learn from his wisdom and to see God’s gifts to that fabled king. This ruler was willing to embrace God’s manifest love of a faithful servant with humility.
The crowds want Jesus to wave his hands, shake the earth, and cause the skies to echo with thunder. Instead, he says, they should heed Jonah’s sign. For Jesus’ followers, that sign will be the cross and his death on it. Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on Luke, Homily 82) says that is the only invitation we get. It’s not about pyrotechnics. The sign is one of going down into the abyss and then emerging again on the other side.
Jesus chastising the crowd by calling to mind the Queen of the South tells us that our own desire to bear witness gives us a chance to focus on God's actions in our lives and the lives of others rather than engage in empty comparisons or petty competitions. In his Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, Ephram the Syrian offers that sometimes the negative sign is the sign we get, and we are challenged to embrace transformation in our lives in its wake.
For the Ninevites, the Sign of Jonah was the prophet walking through their city, semi-digested and repentant. For the court of Solomon, it was seeing the greatest ruler of the South come to make obeisance before Solomon. For me, it was drowning and being rescued from the surf. Our witness to Christ’s humble walk on the Way of the Cross is our sign to turn back to God in humility and grace.
Meditation by the Very Reverend Marshall K. Shelly
36th Rector, St Peter’s Episcopal Church, Spotswood
Dean, Northern Convocation
Diocese of New Jersey