While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them,
“This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.
Jesus warned that generation that he hadn't come to entertain or to impress them. He desired to show them the way to the true promised land of the Kingdom but they were like the evil generation that wandered for forty years in the desert because they refused to trust God. Despite God providing for them on that journey they grumbled and always seemed to want something other than what he gave them, no matter how good or miraculous the gift. Similarly, the generation who heard Jesus were all but impossible to satisfy. They thought John the Baptist was crazy for his life of asceticism. And they couldn't accept the fact that Jesus was friends with tax collectors and sinners, and enjoyed eating and drinking in their company. Even those who heard Jesus with sympathy often remained indecisive, unable to follow him. He told them, in effect, how they were to seize the promised land. They, in response, offered every reason why for them it was impossible. They would ultimately prefer to remain in place, asking Jesus to bless their current situation instead of leading them forth to freedom.
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,
so will the Son of Man be to this generation.
The message of Jonah to the Ninevites was that their current path was one that led toward destruction. God sent Jonah to that people because he did not desire that outcome. Jonah himself didn't bother to indicate that any other possibility might exist. He, after all, did not wish for them to repent. And yet his very presence there as a warning did inspire a great conversion of heart from the least to the greatest. How much more, then, ought the people have converted at the preaching of Jesus, who came to seek and to save the lost, whose heart was motivated constantly by mercy and compassion?
she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
and there is something greater than Solomon here.
Solomon was, of course, the wisest man to ever live because God himself filled him with the gift of wisdom. But Jesus was, in person, "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (see First Corinthians 1:24). If the Queen of the South was convinced because of how well ordered Solomon's kingdom was, and how he seemed to have an answer to every question and riddle, how much more ought the generation of Jesus to have recognized the wisdom with which he spoke? Indeed, his wisdom eventually silenced his opposition, such that "they no longer dared to ask him any question" (see Luke 20:40). Yet even then they did not turn and repent, but only hardened their hearts all the more.
With Jonah and with the Queen of the South it was by Gentiles that the truth of the word was received. God always had a plan to bless all the nations through Israel, and we can see hints of that intention in those instances. So too with Jesus. Although a majority of his own generation refused to accept him, that rejection would redound to the salvation of the Gentiles, including most of us. But the salvation of the Gentiles was not meant to exclude the Jewish people but rather, "in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them" (see Romans 11:14). Because, in the end, God desires all to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth (see First Timothy 2:4). But the only path to this promised land and to salvation is found in Jesus, a greater king than Solomon, a greater prophet than Jonah.
Perhaps we've been waiting for a sign, but insincerely, and only as an excuse for inaction. Hasn't the word of God already persuaded us by the wisdom of his words, having spoken as no one else had ever done (see John 7:46)? If so, then what are we waiting for? Let us, with our whole hearts, follow Jesus.
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