Jonah’s story echoes backwards to the drama of Noah and the Flood, and forwards to Christ’s passion, death and Resurrection.

Surely Jonah is one of the most unwilling prophets in Scripture. Yet God chooses to work through him, despite his lack of enthusiasm, peevishness and self-pity. In fact, it is through this reluctant, whining man that God restates his Covenant, that promise of special steadfastness he made to Noah after the Flood.

Jonah’s obedience is crucial to God’s desire– which is why God hounds the fellow so relentlessly. It’s not until Jonah finally obeys God and goes to Nineveh that the story moves forward.

Jonah is infuriated when God spares Nineveh. Jonah suspected all along that, in the end, God, being merciful, wouldn’t wipe out an entire city. Jonah sees himself as the victim in this story. He charges God with harassment by forcing him into undertake what he knew to be a fool’s mission. Daring God to just kill him and get it over with, Jonah sits in the sand and pouts.

Of course, in a very real sense Jonah is just a messenger. But of what? Is the message nothing but a proclamation of coming annihilation? If so, why bother with an announcement? Jonah’s message—the Sign of Jonah– is God’s invitation to change.

The people of Nineveh hear this invitation, take it to heart, and act on it.
It’s not sorrow or the extravagance of their penance– even the livestock wears sackcloth and ashes—that saves them. It is the changes that they make.

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented.

God wants more from us than sorrow and penance. He wants conversion. He wants metanoia. He wants change. It is change that gives meaning to any Lenten penance or sacrifice. It is change that opens the way to the Resurrection.