GOSPEL REFLECTION, MONDAY, 16TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 21 JULY 2025

Matthew 12:38-42.  We note right away in Matthew’s gospel that it is only the scribes and Pharisees that address him as ‘Teacher.’  Jesus occasionally calls himself ‘Teacher,’ but his disciples never do so.  Outsiders do.  Those who do so are likely approaching Jesus as it were sarcastically.  They likely do not consider Jesus a ‘Teacher’ at all.  Nevertheless, here the scribes and Pharisees, addressing Jesus as ‘Teacher’  -- ‘we wish to see a sign from you.’  Asking for a sign from those who claimed to be prophets of God, teachers, diviners, and so on was not unusual.  We see it frequently in the Old Testament.  It was a way of asking prophets, teachers, and diviners to prove who they were.  In this instance the request for a sign of divine favour from Jesus was malicious.  They had already decided (earlier in this chapter) that Jesus was in league with the devil, so he could not possibly give a ‘sign,’ and further that he must therefore die.

Jesus answered them say that it was only those faithless and evil-doing people who asked for signs.  They were an ‘adulterous’ generation – unfaithful to their covenant relation to God.  That relationship was frequently understood as a marriage between God and the people of Israel (see Isaiah 57.3, Jeremiah 3.9, 9.3, Ezekiel 16.8, Hosea).  They were like an adulterous spouse.  God is eternally faithful to that covenant/marriage while the people are not. 

That is the background to the scribes’ and Pharisees’ demand for Jesus to give a sign of who he really was, and Jesus’ refusal to do so.  He said that Jonah was a divine sign to the people of Nineveh.  The Ninevites paid attention, repented, and returned to God.  As Solomon was a sign God’s Wisdom to the Queen  of Sheba, which she came to experience.  But Jesus says, ‘there is a sign here greater than either Jonah or Solomon!’  Jesus himself is the only sign that will be given, but the scribes and Pharisees, and others like them, fail to recognise him!  In fact they say he is in league with the devil! They failed to see who Jesus was, standing right in front of them!  A question for us: who is Jesus and is he the sign of God’s presence among us?  Do we truly recognise him to be so?