Sun. Mar. 11, 2012 (Santosh Ninan)

Last Sunday Santosh Nonan spoke on "Pondering the love of God". Psalm 107 begins and ends with thanksgiving, while the heart of the poem presents four types of people living away from God and therefore they are in need of God. After identifying each type, the poem indicates that even this type of person can turn to God and be helped. The Psalm considers people who are homeless (107.4-9); people dealing with exile from God (10-16); people who are dying spiritually (17-22); people who are well off and therefore want to maintain the status quo but whose lives are in fact out of control (23-32). Of course we, like these types of people, try to hide our conditions, covering up the truth about ourselves. In the Psalm, each of these groups of people found that they could cry out to the Lord, and that repentance led to forgiveness and true thankfulness. The lost needed a guide, the sick needed a healer . . . God addressed each problem. The Psalm does not suggest that we are saved by our own morality, but instead suggests that not knowing our condition can be dangerous. This recalls the story of Jesus contrasting the effectiveness of two prayers, that given publicly by an unnamed self-righteous Pharisee praying without understanding the seriousness of his needs, and that offered quietly and effectively from the depths of the soul seeking forgiveness. [JEK]

Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday, March 11th, 2012 using your browser's preferred media player.