Jonah 3:1-10                                                                Luke 11:29-32

Nineveh – a Gentile City, and yet God sent Jonah, a Jewish Prophet, to the people in Nineveh to warn them of impending doom if they did not change their ways.   This is not the part of the story that immediately comes to mind when most of us think of Jonah – our first thought is that of Jonah and the whale. 

As the story goes, God calls Jonah to go warn the people of Nineveh and Jonah flees.  He boards a boat going the opposite direction and attempts to run from God.  Clearly, this was a bad idea.  God causes a storm to overtake the ship and its crew is in fear for their lives.  Jonah convinces the crew that their only hope is to throw him overboard – and they do.  Jonah is swallowed by a whale, spends the next three days in its belly, and is then spewed out on dry land.  For many, that is the only part of this story they know.  Our reading today is the next chapter in the story. 

Jonah walks into the heart of a hostile town and converts the King and all the people.   The people, who wearing sackcloth for clothes and covering themselves with ashes are truly penitent, and God forgives them and spares their city.  This is certainly an appropriate reading for Lent – a season that we began with the imposition of ashes upon our foreheads.

Now, if this story seems a little hard to swallow – pun intended, it is because the book of Jonah is not a historical account of the conversion of the people of Nineveh, but rather an allegorical story about the people of Israel.  Jonah, like the people of Israel in the Promised Land, turned from God and God did what he needed to do to get his attention.  Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, the Jewish people were exiled.  While in exile they praised God and understood the error of their ways – as did Jonah who wrote a Psalm of praise while in the whale’s belly.  The people of Israel were allowed to return to Jerusalem and Jonah was spewed out upon dry land. 

The people of Nineveh represent us – the gentiles.  Jonah’s call – God’s call to the people of Israel, is to bring others to God.  Yet, even after the exile, Jewish people had trouble understanding that to be the “chosen people of God” meant they had been chosen to spread the good news.  Yahweh was not a national God, but a God for all nations and it was their duty to bring others back into relationship with God.  Once the people of Nineveh were converted, God forgave them. 

With this in mind, listen again to what Jesus said:  “This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.  For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation.  . . . The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!” 

Jesus was a sign that God’s love and forgiveness was for Jews and Gentiles alike, but the Jewish people didn’t understand this.  They were looking for a sign that the messiah would save the people of Israel. 

We, like the people of Israel, have trouble understanding the expansive nature of God.  God is always bigger than we understand or can imagine.  God invites us into a personal relationship, but God is not our God alone.  God intends for us to share the good news of his love – to love others as he loves us, and to bring others to life in Christ.  Fortunately for us, God’s forgiveness is also infinitely greater than we comprehend. 

In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.