Sermon: Who Do You Think You Are?

July 6, 2020 / admin / 2020, Sermons

Reflection by the Reverend Trevor Jamison for Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, North Shields, online service, July 5^th 2020

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Who do you think you are?

Whenever you try to answer that question you quickly come to the question of who your parents and their parents are or were. That’s what lies behind the popularity of the television programme, Who Do You Think You Are, which traces the family tree of various celebrities.

Our reading from Genesis, about a servant given the tricky task of finding a wife for Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac, was surely written, at least in part, to answer the question, ‘who do we Jews think we are.’ And the answer was, ‘we’re descendants of Abraham’s son, Isaac, and Isaac and Rebekah’s son, Jacob, who was the father of twelve sons, who were heads of the twelve tribes that constituted Israel and all its people’. That’s who we are.

Centuries later, and one of these Israelites, one these Jews, was Jesus of Nazareth, and Jesus too had to answer that question: ‘wo do you think you are?’ Some who were asking him that question were hard to please. Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist, who had a restricted diet and was teetotal, had a demon in him, they said. Jesus, who was happy to eat anything and to take a drink, they condemned as a glutton and drunkard who kept bad company. There’s no pleasing some people.

Still, that leaves us with a question. Who do we think Jesus is? After all, on our church website it says, ‘Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church aims to show the love of God … known to us through Jesus Christ.’ And you can’t do that if we don’t know who Jesus is.

So it’s good here, that in Matthew’s Gospel, we get to listen to Jesus answering that question for himself: ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’ (11:25-27)

That’s five uses of the word, ‘Father’, and two of the word, ‘Son’. Maybe, had he lived in our time, Jesus would have expressed this with different wording, but today, don’t let that distract you from the point that Jesus understands himself in terms of who and where he has come from i.e. from God. He is, as it says elsewhere in scripture, ‘the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.’ (Colossians 1:15)

These verses speak of a closeness of relationship – Father/Son, parent /child, that says, if you want to know who Jesus is, look at God, and if you want to know who God is, look at Jesus.

God, the Father, says Jesus, is lord of heaven and earth (11:25) i.e. God is the creator and sustainer of this universe.

God, says Jesus, particularly loves the weaker ones, revealing things to those deemed infants, that those deemed wise and intelligent can’t see. (11:25)

God, says Jesus, is a gracious God, giving to us out of divine love, not on the basis of human worthiness. (11:26)

God says Jesus, reveals God’s self to us in Jesus, by means of a relationship that is so close – in words and imagery of that time, Father/Son and Son/Father – that to see Jesus is to catch a glimpse of God on earth. (11:27)

So …

God is the creator and sustainer of all things … including you.

God cares for the weak and vulnerable … including, but not only, you.

God loves you … whether you deserve it or not.

God makes this known to us is and through Jesus Christ.

This is who we think Jesus is, and believing that makes us who we think we are.

And that is why we say, ‘Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church …. [exists] to show the love of God … known to us through Jesus Christ.’

May we show God’s love to others and tell them of how we have found it through Jesus Christ, today and tomorrow, and in the days ahead. Amen.

Genesis 24: 34-67, Matthew 11: 16-30, trinity

A Sermon with a Joke in it

June 22, 2020 / admin / 2020, Sermons

A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Trevor Jamison to a United Reformed Church in Essex in 2010

Genesis 22: 1-19; Romans 6: 12-14

I don’t think it is a good idea to start a sermon with a joke.

If the preacher catches the congregation’s attention with a joke, then more likely than not what people go away remembering is not the sermon but the joke. Also, if you are going to tell a joke what you should never do, whether in the course of sermon or in any other setting, is to tell people that you are going to tell a joke. You just know that when someone commences with “I know this really funny story” then it is not going to turn out that way when they get to what they mistakenly thought was the punch line. Also, as well as not starting with a joke and not alerting people in advance that a joke is coming, if you are going to start a sermon with a joke then it should be one that everyone has an equally good chance of getting; not one where people need to be a certain age or come from a specific cultural background.

All of this is a roundabout way of informing you that I am going to start the sermon with a joke. It is joke that I have always found really funny. As I look about me, I’m hopeful that at least some in this gathering have a chance of getting the joke, whether you find it funny or not, so here goes …

What’s the definition of an intellectual?

An intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of the Lone Ranger!

But what have William Tell and the Lone Ranger got to do with Genesis? Well, as I re-read this story in preparation for this sermon, the story of Abraham, Isaac and a proposed sacrifice I kept getting Lone Ranger moments. Like a listener who is invited to hear one story (about a Swiss freedom fighter forced to shoot a crossbow bolt in the direction of his son) but instead finds themselves thinking about a stranger who rides in to town to bring salvation to people in the midst of great difficulty, I was being invited to listen to one biblical story but instead found myself thinking about another one.

Abraham is commanded by God to take his son, his one and only son whom he loves, as we are told in v. 2, and bring him to a hill where he will suffer a sacrificial death. At this point, first time around in reading the story nothing special struck me but then we arrived at verse six: “Abraham took the wood for the sacrifice and put it on his son Isaac’s shoulder” and the two of them travelled on to the appointed location for the sacrifice to take place.

It was the image of Isaac, the beloved son, carrying upon his shoulder the wood that would be the instrument his death that catapulted me, a Christian, from the biblical Old Testament into the New Testament. Now, instead of just reading the Abraham/Isaac story I was pondering another beloved son, wood upon his shoulder, on his way to the place of his death, a death often interpreted by use of the image of sacrifice.

On the journey to the place of sacrifice son and father are in conversation. The son wants to know “where is the sheep for the sacrifice?” (v. 7), not knowing that he, the son is to be the sacrificial lamb. Abraham’s answer is that God rather than human beings will provide himself with the sheep for the sacrifice. God’s provision of the sheep, this lamb of God as one might put it, then brings release to the prisoner and freedom from death. This is true directly of Isaac and also indirectly for Abraham who now has the promise and possibility of a future with descendants restored to him.

By now you are probably aware of the two stories that are in my mind. One is the OT story of Abraham and Isaac and the other is the NT story of Jesus. In both stories a beloved son is to die, carrying the wood that brings death on their shoulders; both deaths having a sacrificial element and in both deaths God who provides the sacrificial creature that brings life.

So what is going on here? Is it simply that I am no OT intellectual, that I’m uniquely incapable of hearing the older story without thinking of the newer one? I don’t think so, for, if we are honest, we have to say that all Christians read the OT stories through the lenses of New Testament faith.

So when the author or authors of Genesis sat down to pen the definitive, final version of the book did they think to themselves, “we’ll have to pepper the plot with mentions of the Christ; make sure to throw in few allusions to the Jesus story, so that when the Christians come to read the story then they’ll be able to make the connection”?

Well, I suppose anything is possible for God. God could choose to let the ancient writers in on the secret of what is to come or perhaps mechanically guide their unsuspecting writing hands to come up with the appropriate wording. It’s possible but I’ve got to say that it doesn’t sound very likely. If that’s not the case, then what is going on here? Why is it that these two stories come together in ways more detailed and profound than a mere musical connection between a Swiss version of Robin Hood and the masked man in an American television Western?

The answer, I think, is that both stories are responding to the same situation. They have touched upon something that runs deep in the universal setting, something that transcends even the human situation. Both are speaking of the reality that God and God’s creation have become estranged and of the need for them to be reconciled. Both stories, the Isaac story and the Jesus story, tell us that if God and we are to be reconciled then sacrifice is the road to be taken to bring that about. In both stories the sacrifice is costly, as costly as the sacrifice of a beloved son would be to a loving father.

Now ‘sacrifice’ is a word that it is not universally popular in church circles today. A while ago I was at a meeting for worship leaders where we discussed theories of the atonement i.e. understandings of how Jesus’s death enables us to be at one with God. Some were happy with talk of Jesus’ death as being a sacrifice. Others were not so keen, questioning who sacrifices Jesus to whom and for what purpose and also questioning whether sacrifice language makes sense in our modern society.

Yet we know about sacrifice – allowing or bringing about the death of one creature in order to bring life to others. After all, as individuals many of us are prepared to sacrifice the lives of other animals in order that we humans might eat and live. As a people we are prepared to sacrifice the lives of our own young men and women in places as far away as Afghanistan in order to ensure the continued life of our society here in the United Kingdom. Sacrifice is not as alien to our experience as we may think (or perhaps wish to think).

The OT story and the NT story are connected by a deep concern with the difficulties of human existence – life and death, bondage and freedom, violence and killing – asking how we are to be delivered from such difficulties and dilemmas. Note, however, that the stories are not the same. In one the beloved son is released, in another the beloved son ends up on the cross. Where the son is released, however, the human predicament is not resolved, as the unfolding biblical story and the history books amply testify. In the later story, the story of Jesus, however, if once again God is to provide the sacrifice, if God is prepared to do what Abraham was ready to do (to sacrifice his own son), then no substitute sacrifice is on offer.

Neither biblical story is intended to be some academic theological tome, explaining in carefully worked out, consistent detail what is meant by every phrase and image employed in the argument. It really does not help to try to take this image, this metaphor of sacrifice as though it tells the whole story of what God does on our behalf through Jesus’ death. What the stories do tell us is that for God to bring life instead of death to the human story is a costly process: it involves sacrifice.

Holding on to this insight, to this truth, let’s not spend too much time in hair-splitting debates about the detail of how God does something. Instead let’s respond with love to the love that God shows in providing a sacrifice that brings us life. As St Paul would put it, “think of yourselves as raised from death to life, and yield your bodies to God as implements for doing right. Sin shall no longer be your master, for you are no longer under law, but under grace.” (6: 13, 14)

atonement, Genesis 22: 1-19, Romans 6: 12-14, sacrifice

Sermon: Both/And

June 16, 2020 / admin / 2020, Sermons

A Sermon preached by the Reverend Trevor Jamison to a Church of Scotland Congregation in 2014, but with continuing relevance in 2020

Genesis 21: 8-21; Matthew 10: 24-39

When Abraham was one hundred years old (21: 5) he did not receive a telegram from the queen. Instead, so the biblical story goes, he received a son from his wife Sarah. Abraham named the son Isaac. When Isaac was eight days old Abraham circumcised him. When Isaac moved from milk to solids, thus negotiating that vulnerable infant phase of life in the ancient world, Abraham marked this by throwing a party, by having a big feast, to which all and sundry were invited.

Among those invited – by Abraham rather than by Sarah one presumes – were Hagar, a slave by whom Abraham had previously had a son, and their child, Ishmael. Isaac and Ishmael, innocent children, play happily together at the party, but things are not so simple as far as the adults are concerned. Instead, the sight of the two kids together, both potential heirs to Abraham’s fortune, angers Sarah and she forces Abraham to choose one woman and child over the other woman and her child. Family life and love, it is suggested here, can only ever be a matter of either/or, never both/and.

Life is complicated. Abraham loves Sarah and she loves him, and they both love Isaac. Abraham also cares for Hagar and loves their son, Ishmael. But Sarah, who loves Isaac, hates Ishmael, fearing that he may have some claim on her son’s inheritance when Abraham (who is getting on in years let’s not forget) finally passes away. Fear of loss is what triggers Sarah’s demand that Abraham shows Hagar and Ishmael the door, leaving the field clear for Isaac to inherit. Not surprisingly, we are told that all of this was ‘very distressing for Abraham on account of his son’ (21: 11) – though there’s no mention that he was equally upset about throwing out Hagar.

Fortunately for the man’s tender conscience God reassures Abraham that things will work out ok for the mother and child he’s about to pitch out into the wild with only a minimal supply of food and water. We’re then told the tale of Hagar in the desert, deep in her distress, unable to bring herself to look upon her dying child. Informed by a heavenly messenger that God has heard the cries of her son, she is in then directed to a source of water which saves both Ishmael and herself. Subsequently, he grows up to be a skilled archer, continuing to live in the wilderness, wed to a woman from Egypt that his mum had obtained for him.

However we read an ancient text like this, whether we understand it to be a simple factual account of events that once took place, or regard it as a folk fable written to make a general point, or see it as something in between, we can surely agree it contains realistic portrayals of aspects of our human condition. Prominent amongst these, is the insight that when we feel that resources are finite or threatened we fight our own corner, however we perceive that, at whatever the expense to other people. To illustrate this with a simple example from the life of two other childhood brothers, this is why the Jamison family had to institute the rule: ‘he who cuts the cake chooses last’.

To bring things more up to date from my childhood and family life in 1960s Belfast, or even the much more troubled family in Genesis chapter twenty-one, I’m struck by how fear of loss affects the decisions so many people and peoples make that then affect the lives of other people and peoples. I suppose I’m sensitised to this by my current work situation; Environmental Chaplain for Eco Congregation Scotland, an ecumenical agency, trying to persuade churches (such as this one) that we need to make practical concern for God’s creation a significant and central part of congregational life.

Persuading churches to do this is not entirely straightforward. Sometimes they are just raring to go with the task of greening their church and their local community. On other occasions that not the case. A lot comes down to timing and local circumstances. Perhaps preventing the church roof falling in rather than attaching solar panels to it is the more pressing priority. Maybe just now, with the new minister arriving in a month’s time, it is not the moment to move forward on such matters, but next year might be. There are often good reasons, not merely bad excuses, why a congregation is not about to embark on doing the thing that I desire.

And yet, I think there are deeper reasons for a reluctance to take seriously environmental challenges in church life, and, as with this Genesis story, fear of loss preys upon our minds and impacts upon our actions. And this is true both of what we label ‘church life’ and also, on the wider stage, in what sometimes gets called ‘the real world’, though experiences in and views of the ‘real world’ often seep into our shared church life, influencing or dictating some decisions we take.

In church life, especially if the congregation is not as big as it once was, we are under a lot of pressure; trying to ‘keep the show on the road’; still trying to pay the bills for a building or a minister that costs as much or more as in the past, but with less money than we once possessed; still putting as much energy into the weekly worship offered by the congregation as has ever been offered in previous generations; still engaged in social and charitable actions, though in communities now less likely to automatically understand or welcome church input.

Then along comes some enthusiast commending or demanding that you get involved in yet another activity – saving the planet, no less – when you were running at full throttle already. It is hard to see how you can take on this without taking away much needed resources from what you believe to be the essential elements of church – its worship, its witness and its loving service. It’s as though an illegitimate sibling has been introduced, demanding from you something that you have already dedicated to Christian church life. To offer another metaphor, there are only so many ways we can slice up – divide – the cake of our contribution to church life.

What we experience in a church setting we are confronted with in a world setting. For decades and centuries we have been the beneficiaries of the slicing up of the cake of the world’s resources. For generation after generation we, at least in this country and some others, have been in the happy position of consuming more and more without worrying about how this impacts upon others, but now all of that has changed.

Now we realise, based on the opinion of the great majority of relevant scientists; that the world’s climate is changing, that humankind’s activities are the main cause of the change, and that if we don’t put the brakes on then people and planet will suffer, today and in the generations to come. And our response, so like that of Sarah and Abraham to the inconvenient existence of Hagar and Ishmael, too easily tilts in the direction of either / or; it’s either them or us, and we don’t like the idea of it being us. None of us wants to see greater injustice in the world, but if greater justice comes only at the price of fewer things available to us, or reduced prosperity for us and ours, well … like Abraham and Sarah, we’re only human, after all.

That response is very human, but it is not very Christian, and we know that because the Bible tells us so. There’s a hint of it in Genesis and there’s a statement of Jesus’s belief about it in our Gospel reading. Confronted by the pressing demands of his wife and the futures prospects of their son Abraham can only spare Hagar and his other son a loaf of bread and a skin of water; enough to salve his conscience though not for them to survive upon. God, on the other hand, has more than enough love to spare; not only for Abraham and Sarah but for Hagar; for both Isaac and Ishmael as well: ‘as for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also’ says God. (21: 13)

And that God has more than enough love to spare is the conviction that Jesus holds. This Gospel passage begins by reminding us that from Jesus’ perspective we are the ones in the position of Hagar. Jesus reminds his followers (and us) that ‘a disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above a master.’ (10: 24) Jesus’s understanding of what that implies about God and us, however, is very different to Sarah’s hostile attitude or Abraham’s grudging response: ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father in heaven. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are more value that many sparrows.’ (10: 29-31)

I suppose that Abraham and Sarah would be interpret that as ‘sparrows are worth less than humans, so we don’t have to worry about sparrows or what happens to them or others species’. But we are not being invited to be followers of Sarah and Abraham. We are called to be followers of Jesus. Our Teacher, our Master, Jesus, tells us that God is a God of both/and, not a God of either/or, as far as love is concerned; both us and the sparrows; both us and the other species; both us and this planet, and all those who live upon it and depend upon it in order to live; ourselves included.

In truth, when congregations become interested and committed with regard to environmental issues, they find that it is a both/and sort of situation. Joyful thanksgiving for God’s creation enriches, not detracts from, the experience of worship; factoring in green perspectives to building and finance issues encourages thoughtful approaches to stewardship in general; commitment to green issues in a local community rebuilds credibility for the church and establishes links with those not committed to faith.

Abraham was a well-off man and, even had it been divided, his estate was big enough to make both Isaac and Ishmael happy. Also, I reckon that there was always enough cake in our household in Belfast to meet my needs, even if there was not always enough to match my childhood desires. I wouldn’t be surprised that if we human beings committed ourselves to do what was necessary, there would be more than enough of the world’s resources to go around today and also be available for the coming generations. If we only perceive others as rivals, however, there will never be a big enough inheritance, never enough cake on the plate, or money in our pockets.

Thank God then that, as Jesus points out to us, his followers, God’s love is great enough, and wide enough, to encompass brothers and sisters, people and peoples, humankind and sparrows and other species, the church and this world. It is this God-like both/and love to which Jesus calls us today, and upon which we and our neighbours depend.

environment, Genesis 21: 8-21, Matthew 10: 24-31

Evening Reflection for 7 June

June 10, 2020 / admin / 2020, Sermons

EVENING REFLECTION FOR ST COLUMBA’S NORTH SHIELDS

Provided by Dr Ann Sinclair

OPENING SENTENCES

Lord, come among us this evening,

In the quiet let us be aware of your presence

Let us be aware of your breath

Let us be aware of your arms holding us

in love.

AMEN

Prayer of Confession

God of all wisdom,

We ask for your wisdom to be our wisdom

Your teachings to teach us your ways

Your example to be seen in the example

we action in our daily living.

Forgive us our failings.

We confess to be slow to hear and notice

your guiding Spirit.

Lift us up ready to learn from our mistakes.

And change our ways to your ways

Have mercy on us.

God of all wisdom

Set us on a new path this Trinity Sunday evening,

A new path to take us forward in the days and evenings that lie ahead.

AMEN

And let us say together the pray our Lord Jesus taught his disciples:

Our Father who art in heaven….

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory

For ever and ever AMEN

READING ISAIAH 40; 12-17, 27-31

REFLECTION The Lord has no equal

Isaiah is considered the greatest of the prophets. He was probably well liked at the beginning of his ministry but as with other prophets soon became unpopular because his messages were scathing denunciations to the people of Judah, Israel, and the surrounding nations to repent of their sins and return to God. Yet his messages in the second half of the Book are full of forgiveness, comfort and hope as Isaiah unfolds God’s promise of future blessings through his Messiah. And so, in Chapter 40 we find such words, in fact the opening words of the chapter read: ‘Comfort, comfort my people’ .

In this Reading, Isaiah describes God’s power to create, his provision to sustain and his presence to help. In these verses we can read of God the Almighty, God the all-powerful, the Lord is the everlasting God, and God cares for each one of us personally. While even the strongest people get tried at times, God’s strength never diminishes, God is always there to listen and help, and the source of our strength. Don’t be afraid, trust in God and you will find new strength; God loves each one of us and is with us always. AMEN

Hymn Do not be afraid

(Rejoice & Sing 591)

Prayers of Intercession

Let us come together in prayer.

Loving God you know each one of us by name

and we come to you now to offer our prayers for others and ourselves.

This world sometimes makes us tired Lord.

There can perhaps be times when what is happening in the world can make tired of what is going on around us.

When we see the starving child or the homeless man or woman,

when we imagine the plight of the abused women or the fleeing refugee.

This world can make us tired, Lord.

When news is 24/7 of plight and pain and poverty, when leaders say and do what we’d reprimand our children for,

when the needs keep on coming and the challenges keep on challenging.

This world can make us tired, Lord.

What can this world at this time make us learn, Lord?

This world can make us love, Lord!

Teach us then Father, Son, Spirit. Teach us all to go!

Preach the Good New

To be the Good News.

With love, with courage, in service. Amen.

Blessing

With God’s blessing be the Lord’s disciples;

not knowing all the answer;

not promising to give all the answers;

but content to know, and confirm to others not to be afraid

that God is present, in all the mix of certainty and doubt that is human life.

AMEN

Isaiah 40

Sermon: Jonah Chapter 3

June 2, 2020 / admin / 2020, Sermons

A sermon preached by the Reverend Trevor Jamison at

an evening service at Brentwood United Reformed Church in Essex in 2011.

Then, as now, the Brentwood congregation was part of a three-congregation pastorate with the URC in Ingatestone and Billericay. The sermon begins refers to a hymn by the URC Minister, John Campbell, retelling Jonah’s story, utilising an unusual tune for singing in a church service.

Jonah 3

Well, whatever you think of having a hymn that goes to the tune There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza at least you cannot fault the words for accuracy in reflecting the biblical text upon which they are based. I’m thinking particularly of the first and last verses of the hymn. Verse one says,

“It was GOD who called Jonah to serve as a prophet,

it was GOD who called Jonah as prophet, ’twas God.”

Verse nine, the final verse, reads,

“It was GOD who called Jonah to serve as a prophet,

it was GOD who called Jonah as prophet, ’twas God.”

It is exactly the same in both cases, and that is also how it is in the first verses of the first chapter of The Book of Jonah, compared to the opening verses of the third chapter, which we have just had read for us tonight:

“The word of the LORD came to Jonah, son of Amittai: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh; go and denounce it, for I am confronted by its wickedness’.” – Chapter one, verses one and two.

And then:

“A second time the word of the LORD came to Jonah: ‘Go the great city of Nineveh; go and denounce it in the words I give you’.” Chapter three, verses one and two.

To put it another way, from the beginning of the first chapter of this book to the beginning of the third chapter of this book nothing has changed. We begin tonight exactly where we started out two evening services, two sermons and twenty-seven biblical verses ago: nothing has changed. Was it worth all the effort? Did I waste all that time preparing and delivering those challenging addresses? More importantly, perhaps, was your journey to hear the previous sermons really necessary? With Jonah we’ve travelled from the seaport of Joppa to an unnamed seashore and nothing has changed …

… as far as God is concerned.

Nothing has changed as far as God is concerned for despite whatever Jonah, a ship’s crew, the population of Nineveh or ourselves should decide to do nothing will change as far as God is concerned. Through it all; through Jonah’s disobedience and flight, through the terror of a mighty storm and the actions of a great fish, nothing changes because always God remains the God of second chances, and nothing changes that. “A second time” God’s word, God’s message comes to Jonah, giving him a second chance by commanding him once again to go to the city of Nineveh, to denounce the inhabitants, thus creating a crisis that will give even that fearsome people their second chance of forgiveness from the Almighty. Jonah discovers what the Ninevites will soon discover for themselves and what we ourselves are allowed to discover for us today: God is the God of second chances and nothing, not even death itself changes that reality.

Nor is this discovery unique in the Old Testament. Jonah may have tried to fly as far away from God as possible. He may have been dragged down to the greatest depths but his is not a unique experience or insight. It is also the witness of the psalmist, speaking with memorable beauty in the 139^th psalm:

“Where can I escape from your spirit,

Where flee from your presence?

If I climb up to heaven you are there;

If I make my bed in Sheol [as Jonah almost did], you are there.

If I travel to the limits of the east,

Or dwell in the bounds of the western sea [as Jonah attempted, heading for Tarshish],

Even there your hand will be guiding me, your right hand holding me fast.”

Psalm 139: 7-12

No matter how much Jonah, the Psalmist or we might try to deny God’s call, it does not change. No matter how far away, Jonah, or anyone else might try to run from God’s call, it does not work, because no matter what we do God does not change in determination to give us that second chance.

So, at the beginning of chapter three nothing has changed, yet everything has changed. Because God is unchanged in the determination to offer a second chance – “a second time the word of the Lord came to Jonah” – everything has changed for Jonah. The Jonah who hears the word the second time is not the Jonah who heard God’s word on the first occasion. Since then he has, as we were reminded in the first sermon in this series, discovered that God’s call can not be evaded or run away from, even if you try to get to Tarshish. He has been exposed as one who rejects God’s call and has been pitched into the raging sea. Experiencing rescue from the storm only by being consigned to the darkness of the belly of the fish, Jonah, as I pointed out in the second sermon, does not try to do deals with God to be delivered from this danger but prays in praise of the God who has preserved his life, admittedly though, through a unique form of ‘tough love’. So, the Jonah who is spewed out of the fish unto the dry land is a changed man; he is a failed prophet, but one who is ready to seize God’s second chance and so find redemption from his many failures. Because, for God, nothing has changed, for Jonah everything has changed.

Then, this changed man, obeying God’s word, shares God’s word with the people of Nineveh. Because Jonah has changed, they get their chance to change as well; they get God’s second chance. And they seize it! Jonah preaches the imminent destruction of the city and we are told, “The people of Nineveh took to heart this warning from God; they declared a public fast and high and low alike put on sack cloth.” (3: 5) The response makes its way all the way to the top of this hierarchical society. Even the king covers himself in sack cloth and sits in ashes, commanding, “Let all pray with fervour to God, and let them abandon their wicked ways and the injustice they practice.” (3: 8)

Would that it was always that easy! I have not publicly denounced Brentwood on behalf of the Lord, nor have I ever announced the imminent demise of those wayward communities: Ingatestone and Billericay; at least, not yet. If I did denounce these communities, I have little or no confidence that they would respond in the way that the great metropolis of Nineveh responded. I would expect a mixture of amusement, irritation and indifference were I to make the attempt. Maybe that says more about me than the situation. Perhaps I’m a reluctant prophet, attempting to ignore or flee from God’s word and I had better to keep an eye out for any big fish that happen to be passing by as I make my way home tonight. On the other hand, Nineveh seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps the author of the book has given us an idealistic account of the response or maybe just every so often things work out that way. Whichever is the case, no matter what I might preach in public, I’m not expecting sack cloth and ashes to become the ‘must-have’ fashion look around here any time soon.

None of that means that we need despair just because we happen to live in a time that is cool or sometimes even hostile towards the word that comes from the LORD. What is true of God in the Book of Jonah is true of God today: God remains unchanging in the desire to present individuals and peoples – and creation itself, I would also say – with a second chance. People do take up the offer to be changed. They do so as individuals and as communities As a society, currently we appear be addicted to debt in the pursuit of comfortable lifestyles; we may be too prone to use our armed forces to enforce our will on others; we may be too ready to let others in this world live in poverty whilst we enjoy luxury. As the hymn writer John Bell puts it, in a hymn concerning Jesus’ birth:

“Centuries of skill and science,

Span the past from which we move,

Yet experience questions whether

With such progress we improve.”

R&S 178

But we can in some significant ways change. As a people we have moved on, no longer content to be the owners of slaves, more open to peoples who are different from ourselves; more ready to demand goods that are fairly traded rather then unjustly exploiting others in the world. None of these changes came about at the pace exhibited by the people of Nineveh, but then Jonah took longer to change and perhaps he is the better model for us today.

This story though, provides not just a model for how we might behave but is a sort of picture of how God works. Do you want to run away from God? God will find a way of coming into your life. God – Godself – will come to you, should it be necessary to spend time with you and call on you to turn your life around. You’ll find God in human guise, in ways reminiscent of Jonah, asleep in a boat in the midst of a storm that threatens to sink it and kill the crew. You will find God in the world, when death is close, like Jonah, lots being cast by those who have him in their power; and with the understanding that somehow his death will bring a divine response that allows others to live. As Jesus himself said, in Matthew’s Gospel, denouncing a whole generation, rather than just the city of Nineveh: “It is a wicked, godless generation that asks for a sign, and the only sign that will be given is the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah was in the sea monster’s belly for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be three days and nights in the bowels of the earth.” (12: 39, 40)

Now Jonah is no Jesus, but Jonah’s story, along with the witness of other OT writers and poets, points us in the direction of God in Jesus, and God’s unchanging, unswerving determination to give us all a second chance. In the Book of Jonah, we are told, concerning the population of Nineveh, that “When God saw what they did and how they gave up their wicked ways, he relented and did not inflict on them the punishment he had threatened.” (3: 10) That’s consistent: God in the OT only ever changes his mind to put aside destruction in favour of forgiveness and a second chance. And now in Jesus, the one through whom God has spoken to us in these last days, God takes on more ups and downs than Jonah ever did, knowing pain and suffering and death; emerging from three days of death’s darkness in a tomb, as once in a story Jonah did from a fish. Jonah emerges a changed man, and as a result, others have the chance to change too. Jesus emerges from his ordeal, having by his death given us the second chance of life and God remains unchanged, still offering me and you that second chance. Yes, as the scriptures remind us tonight, with God, nothing has changed; and as a result, for Jonah, for us, for me, for you, for our church(es), for our community, and for this imperfect world … everything has changed.

forgiveness, Jonah 3, judgement, Psalm 139: 7-12

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