What Is a Sign?
What is a sign? The answer may seem obvious, but it’s a question worth revisiting.
Let’s say we’re driving on the road, looking for a particular place. We see in the distance, mounted on a pole, a large board with words on it. Do we judge the board on how high it stands? Or what material it is constructed from? Do we judge it according to its craftmanship, its neatness? Is the board itself our concern? Or are we more interested in what the board tells us? Do we pay attention instead to the words on the board? If we’re looking for a particular place, if we are not where we want to be, then no matter how glorious a board may look, it is useless if it does not point us somewhere, if it does not guide us in the right direction.
Or those of you who have been married and who wear a ring on your finger, consider your ring as a sign. What is its significance to you? Are you most concerned with the material of the ring—silver, gold, a precious stone set within it? Are you most concerned with how it looks in and of itself? Does its value consist in its costliness or its elegance? Or does it have a deeper value? I remember as a child learning that the significance of a ring was not its material but its shape. It is a circle. Eternal. Sure, we get caught up sometimes in the material of it, but its real value, what is signifies, has nothing to do with the material. The ring could be pure gold or it could be wood, but it would ultimately mean the same thing.
To answer the question, then: a sign signifies. What matters is not the material of the sign, but the meaning of it. To fixate on the material of the sign, would be like looking only at the finger and not paying attention to where it is pointing.
“What Sign Can You
Show Us?”
Today’s scripture is a familiar scene: Jesus overturning the moneychangers’ tables in the Temple. The other gospels place this scene right before Jesus’ crucifixion. John, however, places it earlier in the timeline, a year or so before Jesus’ death. It is possible it happened both times. But it is equally possible that it happened once and the gospels have remembered the event a little bit differently, in the same way that several family members might remember a cherished moment differently. The differences in memory here are a not a conflict that need to be reconciled but are rather distinctions in meaning. Each family member remembers the event in a unique way that captures the event’s meaning for them.
For John, Jesus’ table-turning demonstration in the Temple is a sign that the religious leaders miss. John’s gospel is the only one that gives a voice to the religious leaders in this scene. Jesus declares, as he is driving out the money-changers and their animals, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” The religious leaders respond, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” (John 2:18).
The gospel of John is fascinated with signs. Many readers have noticed that John identifies a handful of Jesus’ miracles as signs. In fact, there are six miracles that John designates as “signs.” Six is so close to seven—and seven is a sacred number (symbolic of the seven days of creation)—that some readers have speculated that there are actually seven signs in John, and one of them simply did not receive the formal designation.
In any case, today’s scene in the Temple raises the question of the meaning of these signs. When the religious leaders demand a sign from Jesus, saying, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” they seem to be asking for a miracle. Which is to say, a demonstration of power. What Jesus has just done does not seem right in their eyes, but if he has the might to back it up, if he can prove his power, then they will perhaps change their minds. Their thinking is a reflection of the cliché, might makes right.
Neither Miracles Nor Calculations:
Christ Crucified
In our other New Testament lectionary text today, we find Paul talking about perhaps the greatest sign or symbol of our faith, the cross. He says, “Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:22-23). Paul is painting with a broad brush here. He’s not talking about the essentials of Judaism or Greek culture, but about two basic ways of living in the world. The “Jews” who “demand signs” represent a religious orientation that focuses on power—that is, miracles, signs. The “Greeks” who “desire wisdom” represent a worldly orientation that focuses on wisdom—that is, good sense, logic. If you would permit a paraphrase, here’s how I would put what Paul is saying when he says, “Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom.” “Religious people demand miracles, mighty deeds that prove their point; and people of the world desire spreadsheets and sound calculations, evidence to back up their decisions; but we proclaim love crucified, which is nonsense to the religious people demanding miracles, and bad sense to the worldly people desiring a profitable bottom line.
Have you ever wondered why Paul proclaims Christ crucified and not Christ resurrected? Or why at the Lord’s Table—“as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death” and not his resurrection (1 Cor 11:26)? Doesn’t that seem a little odd?
I can’t know for certain, but I think Paul highlights the cross because as a sign, it signifies so much more about God’s love than the resurrection alone. If all we did was proclaim the resurrection, or if all we did was talk about the signs of Jesus in terms of his power and might, as though the healings and feeding of the thousands had to do with a demonstration of his godly strength, then we would miss out on the good news completely. It would be like looking at a sign and marveling at its height and craftsmanship, or looking at a ring and thinking its significance consisted in its material value, or fixating on a pointed finger and not looking toward where it’s pointing. I think Paul proclaims the cross because there’s no mistaking its significance. The cross does not show us power or wisdom, not by the world’s standards. It only shows us one thing: God’s love.
The Lenten Bible Study group is reading a book about the seven last words that Jesus utters from the cross. Susan Robb, the author, points out that Jesus’ final words on the cross exemplify the compassion, forgiveness, and love that Jesus showed people throughout his life. In a way, the cross highlights those qualities. It lifts them up and makes them unmistakable. It’s one thing to love others when life is going well. It’s quite another to do that in the midst of cruelty, in the midst of one’s own certain death. As a sign, the cross shows us more than anything else who God is. Not power. Not logic or common sense. But love.
Only a Sign of Love
This Lent we’re focusing on the rejections that Jesus endures en route to the cross, and how these rejections effectively present us with a learning opportunity. (That is what it means to be a disciple, by the way. “Disciple” simply means “learner.”) The rejections that we read about are moments of decision at which we all find ourselves from time to time. Like the religious leaders in the Temple, we might cock an eyebrow at Jesus’ crazy behavior, such as loving enemies or turning the other cheek or forgiving again and again without end. “Yes, but what sign can you show us,” we might ask, “that all of this isn’t just nonsense, that in the end you’re gonna trounce the bad guys and we will be mightily rewarded?”
In today’s scripture, the religious leaders at the Temple effectively reject Jesus because instead of seeing Jesus’ signs for their deeper meaning, they’re looking only at the surface. They’re looking at how high the billboard is, or how expensive the ring is, rather than considering what it means, what it points toward. I think this is why, when they ask for a sign, Jesus does not try to gratify them. He does not point toward the miracles. He does not say, “Haven’t you heard about what I did at the wedding at Cana?” Or, “Just follow me for a few days and witness the healings.” If they’re only looking for power, they will misread these signs. They will not see beyond their surface. They will see a powerful man instead a loving man. So instead, Jesus responds cryptically with a reference to the ultimate sign: his crucifixion and resurrection.
Granted, the resurrection of a dead body may seem like precisely the kind of sign that the religious leaders would appreciate. That’s a miracle! That’s real power! But the curious thing about the resurrection, is that only Jesus’ followers see the resurrected Jesus. Jesus does not parade his resurrected boy in front of the religious leaders, or those who were looking for a sign of power. Only the people who experience the crucifixion, only the people who see in the crucifixion the depths of God’s love, see its heights as well.
“What sign can you show us…?” the religious leaders ask (John 2:18). Perhaps we ask the same thing from time to time, looking for a show of God’s power, for certainty that will dissolve our doubts. But instead all we get is love.
It’s a little bit like the rings some of us wear, if we could go back to them for a moment. When wedding vows are made, they are not made because the two parties have run all the calculations and determined with absolute certainty what will be, or because one person has absolute control over the other and rests assured of a profitable arrangement. (Either of these theoretical circumstances would make a mockery of the marriage, making it a matter of spreadsheets or cold, callous control.) The vows are made not with knowledge of what is to come, not with control over the future. They are made only with love, which is quite vulnerable, which has no guarantees of what is to come. “In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health…” Or as we could perhaps imagine Jesus saying, “In grateful companionship around the table and on a hateful cross…I will love and honor you.”
The signs of Christ, of which the cross is the greatest, are not demonstrations of power or proof of a good investment. They are pointers toward what matters most: God’s love.
Prayer
Who points us toward God’s love—
We see in our world your many signs:
Moments of healing,
Moments when our hunger is nourished,
Moments when the water of ordinary life
Is transformed into the wine of the kingdom,
Moments of love amid great suffering,
When life feels like a cross
…
Help us to accept these signs
Not as proof of power, or certainty of control,
But as reminders of what matters,
Your great love for us, your children…
So that we might not proclaim the signs alone,
But the good news toward which they point.
Amen.
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