Jon 3:1-10 Ps 51:3-4, 12-13, 18-19 Lk 11:29-32

Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer The Daily Reflections Praying Lent

One of the major focuses of today’s readings was the impact Jonah made while doing what God commanded of him. The story of Jonah is really interesting to me because Jonah is so human. He flees when he’s afraid. He gets angry when he feels slighted. His ways are so similar to ours. The reading from the Book of Jonah tells how Jonah did as he was commanded (this was after the entire large fish incident), and thus through the compassion and grace of God, proclaimed God’s warning to the Ninevite people, which resulted in their repentance. Jonah was the sign that God gave the Ninevites to repent. In the reading from Luke, Jesus parallels himself to Jonah, as the sign that God is giving to the Jewish people (and actually to the world) that they should repent. However Jesus goes further and says that he is greater than even Solomon and Jonah. This is awesome! An entire race was saved because of Jonah. The Queen of the South respected, honored, and listened to the wisdom of Solomon; and Jesus surpassed them all!

One of the wild parts of the Luke reading is in verse 32, when Jesus says, “The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah,” because of the implications of this statement! Jesus is claiming that the Ninevites, the men who were so wicked that Jonah fled from God to avoid them, were placed in position of authority in which they could condemn the sinners, by their repentance and God’s saving grace! In our core, we are all depraved.

We have been blessed with common grace, but we are still broken with tendency to sin. Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites. Jesus is a sign to us. But I think that the Ninevites are a sign to us as well; they serve as proof of the saving grace of God and how we are all free to accept it. I think this message is one of the beauties of the story of Jesus and Jonah: both are stories of repentance and of grace.