A Sign?

This generation is an evil generation;it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,except the sign of Jonah.

It is easy this morning to stand in judgment of those perverse populations to whom our Lord spoke exasperatingly in the course of his frustrating three year ministry.

They wanted another sign, and another, assurances that could never assure. They were locked forever into the Lockian paradox of probability and certainty.

They were, indeed an evil generation.

But in truth, are we so very different from our foibling forebears?

Do we still not search the skies for omens like those superstitious wicked people?
Do we not check horoscopes and read fortune cookies?
Do we not plead with God in the interior recesses of our hearts for another signal of his intentions?
One more sign God and I will be a priest, I promise. And yet those signs that we eek out in our semiotic imaginations never quite satisfy.

Why?
Because the clamor for a sign is the empty rhetorical gesture of a procrastinating people, a prodigal people.

This generation is an evil generation;it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,except the sign of Jonah.

Brothers and sisters, the sign has been given. It is the sign of Jonah

The sign of the Son of God, slinking, sliding into the ditch, the depravity of this human condition, taking the form of a slave, a passionate slave, a tempted slave and in his kenotic slavery clearing the ditch, binding our wounds, installing us in the wayward inn of the Church.

The sign of a man, a tired and dust-covered man endlessly traversing the highways of the Palestine of human folly and coaxing, gathering, healing, comforting, pleading. And still they seek a sign, a sign from the Sign, a token from the Sign bearer.

The sign of an ear-splitting Word that shatters the adamantine chains of satanic silence, hushed over a fallen world by a muffled thud of an apple core hitting the verdant ground. The Word of Wonder, Counsel, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

The sign of priestly men, inheritors of the Aaronic breastplate, serving, plying their sacrificial craft, though fractured, broken, sacrificed themselves summoning in their bodies the generative strength of Levi, the power of the Most High, inswirling daily divinity into lowly places.

The sign of a people, wandering, forlorn but brought together under the blood-stained banner of the lamb, roused from their slumberous stupor by the echoes of an antiphon that is theirs to sing: Christus Prolongatus, Christus Prolongatus. The extended incarnation alive in their collective body, a yearning body, a pleading body, a patched body, but a glorified body.

The sign of a host rising like a broken sun above the littered landscape of a body and blood strewn altar, shedding its atomic power, surges of energy that emanate from the throne of the Father of Lights onto an equally littered landscape of broken promises, broken dreams, broken lives.

The sign of a man hung, strung upon a cross of injustice, ebbing out his life for an ungrateful nation, a sign of contradiction. He hangs there, writhing, stabbed, thorned, dying with open arms to welcome his brothers, his sisters, his sons, his daughters, those sign seekers, those prodigals.

Brothers and sisters, I ask you …

What more of a sign do we need than the invitation to live, to love, to serve in his shadow cast so mightily upon the earth, raising our human condition, rescuing us from the mouth of the whale, drawing us ever closer to the Nineveh of our true natures, discovered in the austerity of true repentance.

What more brothers and sisters do you need to see, to be convinced of your call except Jesus?

Here is the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

no sign will be given it,except the sign of …