SUNDAY MORNING SERVICE 5th August, 2001.

To escape is a great theme in people's lives:
'Beam me up Scotty' in Star Trek
in the Psalms 'O for the wings of a dove, far away would I fly ...'
(and in Mendelsohn's Elijah)
-- the grip the soaps have on our lives, 'Neighbours' 'Coronation St'
(often called 'escapism'
stuck in holiday traffic jams trying with everyone else to get away from it all!

Are we also trying to escape God?
To get away from what he wants?
That was Jonah's problem. He went in the opposite direction.
The Lord told him to go to Nineveh, NE from Israel
Jonah went to get a ticket for a boat going 1000 miles West.
He wanted to get away from the presence of the Lord
we are told that twice at the beginning of c 1
But he couldn't and we can't.
Let me try and run a sort of scanner over our lives
based on the things God wants us to do
and where we react going in the opposite direction.
Here's a list of issues of Christian discipleship:
allow the Holy Spirit to nudge you as I speak
and resist the urge to nudge your neighbour.

GENROPSITY 'God loves a cheerful giver'
Are you, or are you in the opposite direction of miserly misery.
Why should churches fear
that offerings will drop by 21 % when the Euro comes in?
TRUSTING GOD 'Trust in the lord with all your heart
and lean not to your own understanding'
Are you looking to him to guide
or are you relying on your own powers.
Worry, tension are warning signs that we are going in the wrong direction.

SEXUAL PURITY
Are you taking in hat you watch and read
'whatever is lovely, pure, of good report ...
are there books, videos, magazines in your home
which you don't want the children to see?

LOVING REKLATIONSHIPS
Has God recently put you in a situation
where you must love your enemies
or you are stretched even to love your brothers and sisters?
It is so much easier and more 'natural'
to take the road of back biting, resentment, gossip, alienation.
People without Christ understand that
but is God asking you to go in the opposite direction?

ATTITUDES
'Rejoice in the Lord always'
but we let stressful situations get to us
we think we are entitled to blow a fuse
we think it's OK to blame others
we get frustrated when things don't go as we want and we have our moods.
That's not to say we must always smile and be happy
even Jesus wept
but it is to say that there are long dark joyless journeys
which many of us take contrary to what God says.
journeys to Tarshish in the wrong direction
and we know we need to turn back into the presence of the Lord,
his light, joy, peace, purity, guidance, generosity.

2 Pointers to encourage us on the way back:

Even pagan sailors can point to God.
An open minded unbeliever may see things more clearly
than a disobedient believer.
I was in my late teens workings a volunteer with the Belfast Samaritans
not answering the phones to the lonely suicidal people
but making tea in the back kitchen for the down and outs.
These marginalised folk would call in just for a place to go
to keep warm and dry, to have some friendship.
One person I summed up as a con man, well spoken, plausible
but the Lord used him as he used the sailors with Jonah.
'I can read minds' he said to me after a few minutes conversation.
'You're a worrier.'
I had to put my hands up.
Not everything was wonderful in his situation but
he had discerned my wrong direction.
However far from God he was, the Lord used him to challenge me.

Recently my wife and I met some 'post Presbyterians'
people brought up in a devout home with all the strengths of that background
but they now distanced themselves.
Why? Because of what they called a 'critical spirit' in Presbyterians they knew
the ability to see what is wrong
without the ability to commend and encourage.
Again, these 'post Presbyterians'
may have their own issues to answer for before God
but as they spoke about this critical spirit
I realised it was time to listen and not to answer back.
God was saying something through their reaction
that I (and you?) need to notice.
God can challenge our failings
through people we might dismiss as not having got things right.

Second pointer is that
God's mercy shines brightest at the darkest moment.
When Jonah hit the water he must have thought:
'That's it.' 'I'm lost, finished.'
But God had other plans in a great fish.
This must not be seen as the brooding evil menace of 'Moby Dick' or 'Jaws'.
This great fish was used to bring God's mercy.
Jonah allowing himself to be thrown overboard
illustrates the paradox and the power of the cross:
'when I am weak, then I am strong'
'He who loves his life will lose it
but he who hates his life will save it' (Matthew 16.25)
In the Pol Pot massacres in Cambodia, many Christians suffered.
One family was told to dig their own grave and to line up on its edge to be shot.
A young boy could not take it and ran for the jungle.
This would only make things worse. Perhaps the whole village would die.
His father pleaded with the soldiers to let him call his son back.
'Come' he said, 'let us show them how Christians die'.
Weeping and frightened the boy returned.
This is not miracle story, there was no great fish,
although they had to find another detachment of soldiers
now prepared to kill the family.
But who can doubt in the gospel of Christ that that family who lost their lives
have gained so much more?
When we come to the end of going our own direction
and turn back as Jonah did
it may seem madness, disaster,
but God is there and has not finished with us.

Help us, Lord.
To go in your direction
to see the folly of trying to escape,
to hear what you may show us even through unbelieving people
and to be willing to lose everything
for the so much more that you will give.