Sunday 4th August 2024 – Communion Service led by Tony Alderman
As part of an ongoing saga, we continue to plumb the depths of Tony’s tie wardrobe. This week it was ‘Belfast, 91’ – not a military honour, but the Annual General Meeting of the Chartered Insurance Institute (he had been President of the Enfield and Hartford Insurance Institute at the time).
He’d stayed in the Europa, the most bombed hotel in Europe at that time, and been impressed by the hotel, the food at the banquet (his huge bowl of fruit for a diabetic), and the help he’d had at a local department store choosing handkerchiefs for his wife and children. When he’d thanked the lady who’d served him, she had leant over and tapped him on the shoulder and said, “We’re not all bad here, you know”. And that had summed it up for him. The Minister of State in the Northern Ireland Office, Jeremy Handley had talked very warmly about Northern Ireland and what a beautiful place it was – and still is! And he’d said, “I think there are about 500 Protestants and about 500 Catholics who are doing naughty things. But the rest of the nation is wonderful”.
So that was this Sunday’s tie. It reminded him of 4 wonderful days in Belfast. He’d subsequently been to Dublin and likewise the hospitality there had been absolutely fantastic. It was up to the Irish what they decided, he thought, but there was good on both sides.
Tony thanked us for feeding him fortnight ago at our 90th Anniversary Dinner. He’d hardly needed to eat since, and the company was fantastic!
We were going to talk about King David and Tony had noted that John Steele had dumped the issue the previous week. If he had taken the Lectionary reading, we would have squirmed a bit in our seats because it was quite raunchy (he had assured his church the previous week after the reading that thankfully the News of the World was not being published again).
The day’s theme “God confronts who we are” followed readings from 2 Samuel 11 & 12, and John 6.
Having made love to Bathsheba and got her pregnant, David had arranged to have her husband killed and in due course taken the pregnant Bathsheba as his wife. God had then sent the prophet Nathan to confront David with the reality of his evil acts, telling the story of a rich man who sacrifices the only lamb of a poor man rather than one of his own vast flock (The reading has God reminding David that he had given him all Sauls wives). David is outraged, not yet realising that he is the rich man in the story. When the penny drops, he acknowledges his wrongs.
David was often celebrated as a man after God’s own heart, but as we had learned, even the highest could fall and hurt themselves. But, more importantly, hurt others.
David was king, so who could tell him that he had fallen short? Nathan, the prophet, finds a way to show David what he has done, and to bring him back to God in repentance. He confronts David directly, not anonymously. The parable God gave Nathen was appropriate for David’s sense of justice. We all had power, whether it was in the family, in church, or as shoppers in the locality; but using it wisely to get the powerful to listen needed God’s guidance. It was a gift, an honour, to speak on God’s behalf.
The prophets cultivated their relationship with God, so that they heard him clearly. To speak on God’s behalf required courage, conviction, and confidence. What was God saying to us? Were there challenging messages that God wanted us to convey to our church and our community?
Our traditions and culture shaped our understanding of the world and our environment. The crowd which had left its daily responsibilities to follow Jesus in John 6 was no different, yet the crowd’s commitment to their forefathers had made it difficult for them to experience Jesus on his terms. The crowd’s demands for miracles were like a repeat medical prescription, but Jesus only did what God wanted.
“Whoever comes to me” was an open invitation to the crowd. Their hunger would be satisfied, and their thirst quenched. Meeting humanity’s most profound needs was what Jesus was about.
How were we to help others to accept Jesus’ invitation to have their needs met by him?
As human beings, we were programmed to look after ourselves, and the crowd following Jesus was no different. He had fed them yesterday. Maybe he would feed them again today with food they hadn’t had to buy or work for. Jesus’s response to them is the same as to us. “I am the bread of life”. Our needs might lead us to seek Jesus out, but ultimately what He offered us was so much greater.
God had confronted David with his mistakes. We should not underestimate the power of our own stories when God spoke through them.
Had we ever looked at photographs of ourselves as we were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and thought, “Did I really look like that?” Some changes were unavoidable. Some were positive; others more challenging to think about. Had we given up on the dreams that we’d had, resigned ourselves to the world being less like we had hoped. Were we less passionate about things that had seemed important when we were younger?
King David was ruling over Israel because God had chosen someone who seemed insignificant, but who worshipped with a pure heart. He had seen numerous battles won because God was with him. Now as king, he had stopped leading his people in battle, and acted in a way that in the past would have been unthinkable for him. He had not only committed adultery, but then, had someone murdered to cover up his crime.
Nathan’s story of a poor man looking after a lone lamb would have cut to the heart of the shepherd boy David once was. He had been incensed, quick to judge, and to pronounce sentence on the rich man in Nathan’s story. Nathan’s words, “You are the man”, had been the equivalent of showing David a photo of when he was young, a time when nothing mattered but protecting the sheep in his care and singing psalms to God.
David had been confronted by how much he had changed, how he had moved away from the boy God had called so many years before, and he had been overwhelmed that he could fall so far.
Tony felt we should reflect on whether our love for God, and the standards by which we lived had changed since we began our journeys. We should look back and allow God to show us any areas where our passion for him had slipped rather than need God to confront us as Nathan had confronted David.
Nathan’s final words to David. “Now the Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die”, showed that God was not looking to condemn us, but to release us from that ill – and the fear of being found out. God knew all that we had done and stood ready to forgive us, and lead us into a life filled with that first love we had had for Jesus, all over again. Amen.
Potters Bar United Reformed Church 