7th September 2003 :  Guilsborough
Looking around the church to-day, seeing you all looking so fit, it is perhaps unnecessary to ask  how many of us aim to be here in church on Sunday, 4 March 2014?  
I hope that all of us will be around to heave a sigh of relief and thank God that the one chance in 909,000 did not occur on the previous day, and Asteroid QQ47, two thirds of a mile wide, travelling at 75,000 mph  and weighing 2.6 billion tons, missed our  little planet.   
The purpose of life and how is it going to end are probably the two most fundamental  and fascinating questions about the world in which we live.   Interesting partly  because we do not know the answers. I hope we never will so that we can,. therefore, endlessly debate them.  
The Near Earth Object Information Centre – the organisation that has spotted the errant asteroid -  is apparently based down the road in Leicester; or that is where their spokesman comes from . 
 I’m bound to say, however,  that I was not aware of its existence until last Tuesday and since then have been wondering how much we taxpayers are shelling out fund it.  It’s hard to imagine a more fatuous piece of prediction. What’s more it was a prediction denied next day by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California .  But I suppose that the NEOIC has to make some announcements from time to time if only to remind us of its existence and put the frighteners on us.  
I can’t help wondering, however, what would happen if we really did know that, for certain, an asteroid would hit us on given date in the next few years.  Chaos probably.  Or perhaps the churches would fill up again in the hope that, as he did in the case of Nineveh, God will change his mind and divert our doom.  But some things are best not known and so I won’t pursue that particular avenue of speculation.
 
Prophets however have played a considerable part in history and will no doubt go on doing so. Almost every civilisation has had them.  One thinks of Cassandra whom no one believed,  Laocoon  at Troy who got strangled by a sea serpent after foreseeing the dangers in the wooden horse; then there was the Oracle at Delphi hedging its bets by never saying anything that could not be interpreted in an number of ways 
Prophets, soothsayers, astrologers were powerful people in the past. Hitler and Ronald Regan were supposed to have consulted them. They are still influential.  I confess that my eye does stray to the astrology columns in magazines and newspapers (of the popular kind, you understand,  I only read in the doctors waiting room)  just in case I’m predicted to have a good or bad week ahead.  
Whether or not we see ourselves as Prophets, most of us like to predict and few of us have much talent for doing so.  Politicians in office usually predict optimistically,  the Opposition usually  gloomily.   At the Millennium we were supposed to have computer melt down. Then, didn’t the Prime minister say that the Dome would be the envy of the world?  And many predicted that the congestion charge in London would bring gridlock outside the zone. 
And what about all those Christian and other sects that regularly take to the hills claiming that the second coming of Christ on such and such a date? 
Which brings me to our Old Testament lesson and Jonah, the first recorded Missionary, it is claimed. I like the Book of Jonah. It’s a wonderful  tale. And I sympathise with the prophet’s frustration. After all you can’t get a bigger certainty to prophesy about than what you are told by God.  “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown”  . 
Then God changed his mind. Well, it’s true that the King of Nineveh had repented and made everyone else do the same.  But spare a thought for Jonah, prophet of doom,  who must have had a great deal of egg on his face.    
Then the story finishes with to-day’s lesson, in that rather inconsequential way with God  sympathising with  Nineveh’s ignorance  “wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle.”  One can’t help feeling that Jonah, in a bad mood as he was, must have made some response before he disappeared into history. But we are left to speculate on that.
There is, however, one prophesy that we as Christians do need to bear very much in mind in our daily lives. We repeated it this morning in the Te Deum.  It is of course the second coming of Christ.  “We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge;    We therefore pray thee help thy servants whom thou has redeemed with thy precious blood. “  It is that hope of being numbered with the saints in glory everlasting that drives our faith and should dictate our actions. 
I don’t know about you, but I certainly need some help to achieve that aim.  Batteries need re-charging.  I am hoping that the forthcoming mission will do some of that for me.  I am not expecting to be banging a tambourine or turn up in Northampton with a brazier on my head like Solomon Eagle, the 17th century fanatic.  Come to think of it, there are six score thousand inhabitants there, and if not much cattle an awful lot of cars. 
But anything can happen in life, especially nothing.   Inertia is the enemy. We do need to be ready to be inspired, open to new ideas and new approaches to our Christian faith, not ducking and weaving like Jonah when he did not want to go to Nineveh. 
After the service to-day,  I recommend you go home and get an orange and put it on the kitchen table. Then find a marble, preferably blue and white to represent our planet at the other end, and  lay the little moon of an aspirin.   Then make a cup of coffee,  or a take a glass of wine. Sit down and contemplate our  bit of the universe, thanking God for  this perfect little arrangement not making us too hot or too cold, spinning too fast or too slow. Thank him for all creation  and our place in it.  
What though in solemn silence all/
Move round the dark terrestial ball;/what though no real voice or sound/amid their radiant orbs be found/in reason’s ear they all rejoice/and utter forth a glorious voice/ for ever singing as they shine/ “The hand that made us is divine.”
But bear in mind that even if that one chance on 909,000 is going to occur: we still have eleven years to make a difference. 
