“Behold, something greater than Jonah is here”
The Penitential Service for Use on Ash Wednesday and at Other Times, found in the Canadian BCP (p. 611ff.) calls us “in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word.” Locating the disciplines of Lent within the tradition of the Church and in its relation to Scripture, it provides a clear and concise explanation for the meaning of Lent. It is a challenge, to be sure.
Lent, in a way, concentrates the Christian journey of Faith into the span of forty days, forty days of a certain kind of focus and rigour, a focus and rigour that by definition belongs to the essence of the Christian Faith. We participate in nothing less than the Passion of Christ. And that is nothing less than the pageant of human redemption.
One of the prayers of the Penitential Service recalls The Book of Jonah, the story of the most reluctant prophet, no, let’s be clearer, the most recalcitrant prophet of all times! God says, ‘go to Nineveh,’ and Jonah jumps on a boat heading to Tarshish, trying to get as far away from God as possible and as far away from Nineveh, as well. Utter folly of course, as The Book of Jonah is at pains to teach us. What kind of God would God be, after all, if you could run and hide from him? Adam and Eve already tried that trick in the Garden of Eden, having hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God. “Where art thou?” God asked, knowing full well where they were but highlighting their sin and mistake. Nothing can be hidden from the sight of God. Our attempt to do so only proves our sin. Such is our predicament.
Lent seeks to awaken us to the reality of human sin but only so as to catapult us into the greater reality of divine love and mercy. The prayer which refers to The Book of Jonah reminds us that God “forgavest the people of Nineveh when they repented in sackcloth and ashes.” We may know of the ashes of Ash Wednesday, the sign of repentance and of our human desire to turn back to the God from who we have turned away, but I suspect that we are wholly unaware of the sackcloth that accompanies the ashes of repentance. Of course, they go together but the image of sackcloth remains inescapably, it seems to me, as part of a kind of counter not just to the fashion culture but to our preoccupations with image and outward expression in general.
In a wonderful passage in St. Luke’s Gospel (Luke 11. 29-32), Jesus speaks about the Queen of the South “com[ing] from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon” and the sign of Jonah, the one referring to the wisdom understood to be universally perceived in Solomon, the other to the effect of Jonah’s mission finally, though reluctantly, preaching repentance to the people of Nineveh who marvelously and miraculously repented. The consequence was forgiveness; they were spared the wrath of God.
What is the lesson? God’s mercy and truth are greater than all our sin and folly. Forgiveness opens us out to the justice and truth of God. It underlies the whole project of Lent. Luke emphasizes the way in which those Old Testament images are taken up and transformed. There is something greater than Solomon here, Jesus says, something greater than Jonah here, he says. What is it? Simply the passion of Christ and its meaning for us in our lives.
We can only take a hold of that through the disciplines of Lent which are based upon this understanding. Something is required of us if ever we will be open to what is greater than the wisdom of Solomon, greater than the preaching of repentance by Jonah. What is that something greater? It is nothing less than the passion of Christ. Lent is about nothing more nor less than the form of our participation in Christ’s passion.
It begins with the forms of penitential adoration that the Penitential Service provides for us. Somehow in our confession of sin we discover the praise of God. It is all about our encounter with what is greater than Solomon’s wisdom and greater than Jonah’s mission. We are opened out to deep love of God for us. In him there is indeed more than the wisdom of Solomon and equally more than the sign of Jonah.
What is more? Simply the grace of Christ who invites us to his passion. Something more is here through repentance and wisdom.
“Behold, something greater than Jonah is here”
Fr. David Curry
Ash Wednesday, 2013