Jonathan and Rachel share many common interests. One of them is golf. They are not alone in longing to consistently drive the middle of the fairway, hit the green in regulation, get out of sand traps in decent shape, and sink those birdie putts. And we are willing to spend serious money on the latest clubs, clothing, lessons, books and videos to achieve that.

Whether you play golf or not, here are 12 simple lessons I am learning about golf which equally apply to marriage. They may not improve your game of golf but they will certainly improve your game in life.

1.  Golf teaches that we all have handicaps … and that hardly anybody knows what they really are. In marriage you get the chance to discover what those handicaps are in yourself and in your partner and in love help improve one another’s game.

2.  Golf teaches that the best courses are the ones that hardly change what God put there in the first place. As they say, play the ball where it lies and play the course as you find it. Fulfillment comes in accepting each other the way God has made us, handicaps and all, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

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Its been a pretty good time for pharmaceutical company shares –  at least those selling stress reducing medications… First, there was the government sponsored report that revealed the next generation of home buyers will struggle to even get a toe hold on the property ladder. Whereas in 2000, house prices averaged four times annual earnings, by 2026, house prices will cost 10 times average earnings – so mortgages will get costlier and take longer to pay off. The solution? Simple. Live with your parents until you can move in with your children…

Then came a report by an eminent chronobiologist, Professor Russell Foster of Oxford University, who predicts we are becoming a “Zombie Nation”. We are literally sleep walk our way into economic disaster. Extended work hours and a growing 24/7 entertainment, shopping and TV culture is leading to serious sleep deprivation. The consequences are weight gain, a rise in irritability, hallucinations and motor car accidents.  The answer? For years the army have used the drug modafinal to help. Want to get more out of life, can’t afford to sleep but don’t want to be a zombie? Try modafinal. Problem solved.

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Do you ever read the names at the end of a movie? I usually only do so when the film has left me in a state of shock and I’m regaining my composure, like Woman in Black which I thought was safe because its rated a 12… I might watch the scrolling credits if there’s some neat music I want to listen to, or they have interspersed the credits with humorous out-takes that never made it into the film.  Whoever reads the credits for the fun of it or to learn something significant? Doesn’t it ever amaze you that so many people’s names are listed? Are they real? And what’s a ‘Dolly Grip’ and ‘Best Boy’ anyway? Scrolling too fast to read any way there are hundreds of names of people who never made it in front of the cameras but who played an essential role and made the film possible. When you get to the end of one of Paul’s Epistles, it’s a bit like watching the credits at the end of a movie. Paul added them for a purpose. They are literally the credits for the movie of the Early Church. In Colossians 4:7-18 we meet an unusually long list of Christians who lived in Colossae. They may never have got to be in front of the cameras, an Apostle or perform miraculous signs, or write scripture or preach before kings and governors. So why do they get a mention? Because they played an essential role in the growth of the Church and Paul appreciated them. Paul holds them up as an inspiration to others. Listed here are ordinary Christians like you and me. They nevertheless played a vital role in the spread of the gospel.

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When I moved to Bristol about 32 years ago to train at Trinity College it took me some while to figure out why our road was called “Black Boy Hill” and the road next door with all the shops was called “White ladies walk”. I late discovered the ignominious role ports like Bristol and Liverpool played in the slave trade. The many fine buildings in these cities were built with the profits, as was this very church. It is easy to become desensitised to the suffering that occurred in our distant history. The British government has been careful in the way it has expressed sorrow for the past, to avoid a flood of legal claims by the descendants of slaves demanding compensation. Even art does not escape politicisation. We can recognise paintings that epitomise our national heritage – scenes like these painted by John Turner. But what about this one? Recognise it? Painted in 1840, it hangs in Boston’s museum of fine art. Know what Turner is saying? Its title is “The Slave Ship” but Turner wasn’t satisfied. It has a subtitle, “Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying, Typhoon coming on.” “It kicks you in the gut” says art historian Simon Schama. Turner has captured one of the most shameful episodes of the British Empire, when 132 men, women and children, their hands fettered, were thrown into shark-infested sea, so that traders could claim the insurance for their loss. When the transatlantic slave trade was abolished in the British Empire, two hundred years ago, estimates suggest there were around 11 million slaves in the world.

Today there are more, at least 12 million. Tearfund tell us that  “vicious illegal forms of slavery are flourishing across the world. Aside from guns and drugs, no trade is more profitable. Despite the fact that slavery is banned in most countries where it is practised, and prohibited by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the slave trade is flourishing throughout the world right now.”

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I know it’s only June, but it’s never too soon to start thinking of Christmas is it? Remember Charles Dickens’ play, A Christmas Carol? There’s Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley and Bob Cratchet and Tiny Tim. Ebenezer Scrooge was a heartless  man. His business partner Jacob Marley had died a few years before. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge went home and Marley’s ghost came and visited him. Indeed Scrooge is visited by three ghosts that night—the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present and the ghost of Christmas future.  During their visits, he sees himself as he really is. He sees the love and kindness of those he mistreated. And sees his own death. He wakes up on Christmas morning a changed man. He has seen the bleak future of his wicked life and determines to change his ways. What would happen if we could see our own funeral before it happened? How might we change our ways now? In our passage tonight, God inspires Amos to preach at their funeral while they’re still alive. He preaches a funeral for the living dead. This passage is an example of what’s called a lament. A lament is a poem of mourning connected to the death of a loved one. A lament wasn’t known for celebrating the life of a loved one like many Christian funerals are. Instead, it was known for its words of grief, regret, sorrow and pain.

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