A medical degree: proof of competency to practice medicine.
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How much proof is enough? For some people there can never be enough. I once knew a man who worried constantly about his house, whenever he traveled. He would call home to neighbors. Yet that never seemed to satisfy him. He lived in constant worry. I often wondered why he ever traveled.
As you know by now, when the time for his three-year public ministry arrived, the purpose for which he had been born, Jesus set out to proclaim his Father’s kingdom, fully aware that he needed to show legitimate proof that he was the promised Messiah and Savior. He didn’t manufacture proof. But he did give them in proper measure and at the appropriate times.
You remember how he reassured John the Baptizer, when the latter sent disciples to Jesus from his prison cell, asking him if he really was the promised One, or if they should await another to come. You remember how Jesus answered him. John’s disciples arrived as Jesus was in the midst of his regular ministry to suffering people, which involved periodic healings and exorcising of demons. When he heard John’s question, he said to the messengers (I paraphrase here): “Just tell John what you are seeing,” and he then quoted an Old Testament prediction of the Messiah, “how the blind see, the deaf hear … and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. And tell my dear cousin not to let doubts creep in. He recognized me correctly from the first.”
There are legitimate doubts. Which of us, when called upon to do something very difficult that we have done before, doesn’t worry “Can I really do that again?” But there are also unreasonable ones. The entertainment world of bestselling books and movies is full of this latter type of doubting. Conspiracy theories about how the Roman Catholic Church has managed to suppress a deep dark secret that Jesus was married all along, and that his descendants are still alive to day. What has always amazed me about this particular idea is that the Roman Catholic Church has never been able to keep any of its mistakes or failures a secret! Just look at the almost daily news stories about abusive priests. For it to be able to successfully keep such an astounding story secret for over 2000 years would be a greater miracle than the Virgin Birth of Jesus!
Jesus never coddled people with that kind of insatiable doubting. Today’s passage has to do with the ancient equivalents of the media crowd today hungry for salacious rumors about Jesus and conspiracy theories about how he might have put one over on the crowds of followers. They are the boys who keep asking him for (another) miracle to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the Messiah sent by God.
One day when the crowds around him were bigger than usual, and Mark in his version (8:11-12) indicates that some of his critics among the Pharisees began to argue with him testing him by asking for a special sign from heaven—i.e., a miracle, Jesus responded (and again I paraphrase): “It is an evil people that is constantly seeking miraculous signs. God will give you one sign that you will not like. The sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah became God’s 'sign' to the people of the pagan Assyrian nation of Nineveh, after being miraculously rescued from three days in the belly of the great fish, so I will be God’s 'sign' to you, after I spend three days in the tomb”. Jonah, who after an impossible three days in the belly of the great fish, was “resurrected” and traveled to Nineveh to warn the Assyrians to repent—and you remember they did, so Jesus after he has been crucified and his body lay lifeless in the tomb until the dawn of the third day, when he rose, and through the testimony of the disciples to whom he appeared after his resurrection he confronted the Jewish people with the ultimate demand to repent and believe in the Messiah.
This would be Jesus’ greatest credential—a “sign” that God would give as the final one. Other miracles there would be, as we see in the book of Acts. But nothing more was promised, nor should more be necessary. The resurrected Savior, who himself gives life to the dead, is all that was or is needed.
Why was Jonah chosen as the example? Obviously, the three days in the fish’s belly was one reason. The other reason was that a pagan and polytheistic people like the Assyrians repented at his message, while back home in Israel the people God had chosen for his own were imprisoning and stoning to death his other prophets! We know this is part of the purpose for Jesus’ choice of the Jonah illustration by his next example. The Queen of the pagan and polytheistic South Arabian kingdom of Sheba traveled long and hard to come to Jerusalem and see the glory of King Solomon, and she returned greatly impressed with his wisdom (1 Kings 10). Yet here these critics traveled a short distance from Jerusalem to Galilee and are hearing Jesus, God’s Chosen One—whose mission and ministry is something far greater than anything Solomon ever accomplished—and yet they are unimpressed. Never satisfied. Only interested in further testing and questions.
I forget who it was who once said it. But persistent doubters like these are like persons who have forgotten that drinking is for the purpose of quenching thirst, and eating satisfying hunger. Questions are not to be an end in themselves, but a brief means of reaching satisfying answers.
How is it with you? Are your questions finding satisfying answers from Jesus and the gospel writers? I hope so. None of us ever gets too much of reading and “chewing” on the Scriptures and especially the stories of Jesus’ deeds and words. But that isn’t because we were disappointed with what we have learned before. Quite the contrary! Because we have found refreshment in our thirsty souls, and want to drink again.
The season of Lent, which began on Wednesday, the 6th, will be a good time for us to feed and drink of Jesus’ words and works on a daily basis. I need and want it as much as you do.
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