Lent Week 1: Wednesday
In today’s gospel according to St. Luke we hear Jesus condemn his own ‘evil generation’ for seeking ‘signs’ or miracles. The people wanted absolute proof of Jesus’ authority before they were prepared to accept his good news. Jesus disappoints them declaring: ‘no sign shall be given except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the men of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation’ (Luke 11: 29-30).
In contrast to St. Matthew’s gospel, then, which draws attention to the parallel between Jonah’s three days and nights in the belly of the whale and Jesus’ time in the tomb (Matthew 38-42), Luke’s gospel emphasises instead that both Jonah and Jesus are preaching a message of repentance. Both are calling on their contemporaries to change their ways. Hence the men of Nineveh ‘will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah’ (Luke 11: 32). Jesus, on the other hand, was handed over to the Romans and crucified.
Yet the repentance of the people of Nineveh seems to have been short lived. In the book of Jonah we read that God decided to spare the city from the destruction he had threatened (Jonah 3:10). Yet in fact Nineveh was destroyed in 612BC by the Babylonians, and Jesus’ contemporaries would have known this. This suggests that the conversion of Nineveh in response to Jonah’s preaching was a superficial one: after their fast the people returned to their old ways. The city made outward gestures of sorrow for their sins, but did nothing to correct the injustice at the heart of their society and so eventually their sin destroyed them. True repentance, then, is not primarily about outward rituals but, as we read in today’s psalm, a change of heart: ‘my sacrifice a contrite spirit, a humbled contrite heart you will not spurn’ (Psalm 50(51):19).
Yet if Nineveh’s conversion was only superficial, why then will its people rise up and condemn Jesus’ generation? The answer offered by Jesus is simple: ‘something greater than Jonah is here’ (Luke 11:32). Unlike Jonah, Jesus offers more than just a message of repentance or change, he also offers himself as the agent of that change. To be made just, to be justified, is to move away from sin and into a right relation with God. This is not something we can do by our own strength. The people of Nineveh could not ‘earn’ their salvation. Only God can heal the wounds of our sin. Justification comes, then, when we accept God’s free gift of salvation. This free gift is offered to us in Christ. We use our Lenten observances, then, to remind ourselves that we depend on Christ alone: we must never fall into the trap of thinking that the observances themselves will save us.
