Reading: Matthew 12.38-50
We were travelling south along the new England Highway to Newcastle. Our eldest daughter, Ruth, lives and works there. Our next daughter, Rachel, is spending a few weeks with her before leaving on an overseas trip.
This was really our first visit to Newcastle. The couple of times we have been down that way we have either taken the Putty road and avoided Newcastle altogether, or we have skirted through Charlestown and passed by a quickly as possible.
But this time Newcastle was our destination. Driving through familiar Granite Belt haunts, slowed down by road works or by pouring rain, we kept our destination in mind. It becomes confusing in places – especially where new roads and bypasses put old maps out of date.
So, having eaten tea at Muswellbrook, we set out in a heavy shower of rain – having in mind our general route, but watching out for confirming signs. And where did the signs point us? To “Singleton and Maitland”! Too dark to check our maps! But why no reference to the region’s most prominent centre, Newcastle? We mentally checked our geography, but would liked to have been comforted by a confirming sign!
In the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul draws attention to the Jews’ desire for signs - “Jews want miracles for proof, and Greeks look for wisdom. As for us, we proclaim the crucified Christ, a message that is offensive to the Jews and nonsense to the Gentiles; but for those whom God has called, both Jews and Gentiles, this message is Christ, who is the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor.1.22-24).
And in today’s reading, we hear some teachers of the Law and some Pharisees saying, “Teacher, we want to see you perform a miracle.”
They know that he has healed the sick, though they have just asserted that his power to cast out demons comes from Beelzebul himself (v.24). Now Jesus has said that what a person truly is on the inside will express itself in words and actions - good or bad (vv.33-37).
All right then, Jesus – show us a sign. Perform a miracle that will show beyond a doubt that you are from God, that you are the one he promised to send, that you are the one you claim to be!
“A wicked and perverse generation seeketh a sign”, the King James Version put it – “How evil and godless are the people of this day! You ask me for a miracle? No! The only miracle you will be given is the miracle of the prophet of Jonah. In the same way that Jonah spent three days and night in the big fish, so will the Son of Man spend three days and night in the depths of the earth.”
That, by the way, has been recorded in more recent history. Early this century a New Zealand sailor was found to be still alive after a similar experience. I am not sure that he was in a state to go immediately on a preaching tour. It is said he was quite a sight – his skin bleached white by the acid in the stomach of the great creature!
Did the people of Nineveh know the “miracle of Jonah” – the means by which this reluctant prophet had been brought with his stern message to their city? It was a thousand-kilometre trip to Nineveh. His physical appearance would have been back to normal, but the message of the Lord was delivered with vigour and conviction.
You want a miracle – a confirming sign that puts it quite beyond doubt that I am the Messiah? There will only be one such sign – the sign of Jonah! I will die, but from the third day there will be a message strong and powerful. True, it will not be delivered immediately – not in fact until forty days after on the day of Pentecost. It is a message that will not only confirm my identity, but will call you to repentance. “On Judgement Day the people of Nineveh will stand up and accuse you, because they turned from their sins when they heard Jonah preach; and I tell you there is something here greater than Jonah!” (v.41)
The big issue is not whether there is a miracle or how we react to it, but how we respond to God. It is sometimes assumed or taught that if we had more miracles in the church, more people would believe. Jesus himself didn’t give us grounds for thinking so. At the end of chapter 13, we read of Jesus’ visit to his home town, Nazareth – “Because they did not have faith, he did not perform many miracles there” (13.58). And in 11.20, we read, “The people in the towns where Jesus had performed most of his miracles did not turn from their sins…”
I believe that God works miracles. Yet miracles in themselves do not guarantee the authenticity of messenger or message, nor do valid miracles guarantee the reality or depth of people’s response to God. Indeed, in 24.24, Jesus warns us that in the last days there will be “false Messiahs and false prophets” who “will perform great miracles and wonders in order to deceive even God’s chosen people, if possible.”
Jesus refuses to oblige them with the sign they want –he insists that they turn from their sins. In any case the miracle of healing is not enough. Jesus illustrates this with the example of a person from whom an evil spirit is cast out. That is fine, but unless there is repentance and faith – unless God’s Holy Spirit is permitted residence there – the person may end up worse off after all.
The Rangeville Church was part of my responsibility when ministering in Toowoomba. A Decision was made when that church was built that there would be no memorial plaques. However, the family that gave the pulpit insisted that there be some point of recognition of their substantial gift. So a small plaque was placed on top of the pulpit rail, visible only to the preacher – with the text, “Sirs, we would see Jesus!” (from the request of some Greeks to Philip in Jn.12.21).
Of course, the plaque was also visible to the lady who did the church cleaning. One day she expressed her strong annoyance to me. She saw it as a request from the congregation each week to see Jesus in the pulpit. “There should be,” she said, “a big plaque facing the congregation with the words, ‘Sirs, we would see Jesus!’ That is what the preacher should expect to see as he looks down on his congregation!”
The people were looking for a sign from Jesus, but Jesus was looking for a sign too – a sign from them!
The words of Jesus about his mother and brothers seem a little harsh to us and rather out of character with the one who carefully handed the care of his mother over to the beloved disciple. It helps us to read the background of this incident as provided for us in Mark’s account in ch.3. From v.20 we read, “Then Jesus went home. Again such a large crowd gathered that Jesus and his disciples had no time to eat. When his family heard about it, they set out to take charge of him, because people were saying, ‘He’s gone mad!’ Some teachers of the Law who had come from Jerusalem were saying, ‘He has Beelzebul in him! It is the chief of the demons who gives him the power to drive them out’…”
That puts a different complexion on the whole situation. Here in the middle of his ministry his family has come to manipulate, to meddle, to control… We know that his mother was there to support at the end. It would appear that his brothers didn’t come to faith until after the resurrection. No, Jesus wasn’t rejecting the importance of human family, even though he refused to submit to their control. Jesus had a totally unique relationship with the Father – he was truly the Son of God – and the members of the human family in which he grew up could not therefore have any pre-eminent claim over him – such as, for instance, the Catholic Church has tended to give to Mary. For that human family – as for the rest of us – the central issue is our response to the Father and his will. This was even more important to him than human lineage.
Show us a sign, Jesus! Do us a miracle! At the end, it is still their jeering call – “If he comes down off the cross now, we will believe in him!” (27.42c).
But Jesus is looking for a sign! “Whoever does what my Father in heaven wants him to do is my brother, my sister, and my mother.” In Luke 18.8 he says, “But will the Son of Man find faith on earth when he comes?”
Do you think he will “find faith on earth”? We would like God to “act up big” for our sake, but what is he asking us to do?