Two-way Forgiveness - Sunday 5th February 2017

As Jonah sank down into the stormy waters of the Mediterranean, he thought he was about to die and he knew he deserved it. He was running away from God’s call, and the storm - which was threatening the lives of everyone on board the ship to Tarshish - was focussed directly on him. Jonah understood his guilt and decreed his own punishment. He was thrown overboard, and as he sank into the turbulent water he called out to God to spare him.
Then came the famous whale. God, who had who had sent a deadly storm against Jonah, had also sent a whale to save him. As Jonah discovered himself to be surprisingly alive in the belly of the whale, he discovered the depths of God’s forgiveness.
Take: 2. God called Jonah once more. This time the prophet obediently made his way to Nineveh - the heartland of his greatest enemies - and dutifully proclaimed God’s impending judgement. Jonah knew about God’s judgement from his own recent experience. With his mission accomplished, he settled down to watch the great city’s downfall.
But nothing happened. The people of Nineveh had called out to God to spare them, just as Jonah had, and God resolved to do just that.
Jonah was not pleased. He had not travelled all that way only for nothing to happen. He had done it to see his enemies destroyed. He was furious at God's graciousness. This prophet, who had gratefully accepted God’s forgiveness a few weeks earlier was not willing to extend the same mercy to the people of Nineveh.
God needed to teach Jonah a lesson, and did so by employing a plant and a worm (Jonah Chapter 4). The point of the lesson was simple. Forgiveness is a two-way process. If you want to be forgiven, you have to be willing to forgive.
Jesus put a clause to that effect in the Lord’s Prayer.

So Well Known - Sunday 2nd October 2016

We know more about King David than any other character in the Bible. Not only do we have a wide range of surprisingly honest stories, spanning from his early teens to frail old age, we also have a stack of poems - lyrics to songs - that are reliably attributed to this remarkable man. So we don’t just know what David did, we know how he thought, and how he felt.
Many of David’s psalms reveal the insecurity of power, and show us a powerful man who was constantly looking over his shoulder for fear of attack. But there are other psalms that reveal David, son of Jesse, to be a deep and passionate thinker, attentive to the most fundamental questions of life.
In Psalm 139 David reflects on the experience of knowing, and being known by, God. "You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. Even before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely.” He further contemplates God's inescapable knowledge: "Where can I flee from your presence? If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me.” Then David switches from that wide poetic perspective to one of extreme intimacy: “You knit me together in my mother’s womb. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.”
There have been many occasions in the history of religion when the all-knowing nature of God has been used to frighten people into submission. But David expresses no fear. For him, the eternal presence of God is like a thick duvet on a cold night. God’s presence is the only place that he feels safe and secure.
Jesus, on occasion, was called ‘Son of David’. This can’t have been because Jesus was a warrior or a politician because he did not model himself on those aspects of his famous ancestor. Jesus was the ‘Son of David’ because he too opened people’s eyes to the gently powerful, merciful love of God. To employ the most famous poetic reflection of the young shepherd turned great king: "God is my shepherd. I will lack nothing."

Depths of Mercy - Sunday 25th September 2016

It feels easy to trust God when things are going well. We lazily assume that they are going well because God loves us and we are pleasing him in the way we are living. But what about when things go badly? What about when things go badly through our own fault? How easily can we trust God then?
Towards the end of his life, King David seriously offended God by conducting a detailed census of Israel’s potential army. Almost as soon as the census was complete, David realised his error: he had failed to trust God, trusting - instead - the strength of his military force. God took action to discipline the ageing king, and demanded that David choose from three proposed punishments. David made his choice immediately. He opted for the third, three days of plague, stating: “Let’s fall into the hand of God, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into human hands.”
Even though David’s trust in God had evidently become somewhat flakey, he was quick to trust God’s discipline. He did not think of God as being terribly vengeful, but as being essentially merciful. One of the features of David's story is that he was evidently an experienced sinner, and as such, understood more than many people the depths of God’s mercy. If he was going to be punished, David had no doubt that he wanted to be punished by God.
It is when we entrust God with our failures and our disasters that we begin to experience the depth of his mercy. And it is as we begin to experience the depth of God’s mercy that we learn how to show mercy to others.