The book of Jonah is the fourth shortest book in the Bible. Just 48 verses among its four chapters, it nevertheless is easily the most memorable of the twelve minor prophets. His encounter with the whale or “great fish” is probably in just about every children’s Bible and Sunday school curriculum. I expect most of us know it. If you do not, the entire book is only about a page and a half in our pew Bibles, and you just heard about a quarter of it. It doesn’t take long to read, but it may take some time to reflect on his story and what his experience teaches us about God and ourselves.

This morning we heard the final scene. Having repented of trying to flee from God’s command and being spat out of the great fish onto dry land, Jonah does as God instructed. (We assume after a bath and freshening up a bit.) He goes to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, to warn them to repent and turn to God, or God would destroy their city.

This morning’s gospel is at once extremely helpful and extremely demanding. Peter asks how many times he must forgive, “a member of the Church.” Jesus answers, “not seven times, but seventy times seven.” That doesn’t mean 490 times. It is an old Biblical metaphor used in Genesis to describe unlimited vengeance. Jesus uses it to emphasize unlimited forgiveness. This standard is absolute. And, like everything else Jesus says and does, this has everything to do with the Kingdom of God.

Then Jesus describes forgiveness with this parable. The slave has racked up an impossible debt, roughly 160,000 years’ worth of wages. (That’s a long time; 160,000 years ago, humans were using stone tools and fire, and when they had neanderthals in the neighborhood it wasn’t a metaphor.)

This morning’s gospel includes on one level the very best advice we have on conflict resolution. The basic principles of going first to the person directly, then involving two or three witnesses, then taking it to the community make perfect sense in any context. That’s truly helpful because we are so regularly in conflict. Let’s face it, people are very difficult to get along with – not you, of course, but those other people. You know who they are.

The conflict could be within our families, in our workplaces, our neighborhoods or really in any context. The idea of trying to work it out first one-on-one saves everyone trouble, and avoids any embarrassment as well. Including two or three witnesses also keeps it pretty well contained, and helps to ensure that people are hearing each other clearly. Finally, taking it to the community as a last step offers a chance for the issue to be finally resolved.

This week we’ve got to do a “Previously on Good Shepherd” like they do on TV shows. Those of you streaming this at home can skip ahead a couple of minutes. (Just a moment, I’m buffering.)

Last week we joined Jesus and his disciples at a pagan shrine in Caesarea Philippi where Jesus asked them who they say he is. Peter responded, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus gives Peter a gold star for the day and says that is the rock upon which he will build his Church, and through the Church the Kingdom of God will take shape in the world.

This morning’s readings speak to the question of identity. Who are we, really? We tend to think of that in terms of where we were raised, what we do and other sorts of tags of what is called social location, as though we could be plotted on a map. But it’s more like an ever-shifting sea.

And identity isn’t just about us as individuals. All of those markers place us in groups and as such we take on those identities, too.  The history of those groups is our history. That can be anything from sharing joy in Lake Wales High School winning a state championship to cherishing our Declaration of Independence.

I have an older brother and three younger sisters, which could be chaotic at times and that included meals. My mum came up with a rule to cope with us having differing food tastes and preferences. We were each allowed to choose one food that we did not have to eat. Anything else, we had to eat what was on our plate.

That put me into a quandary because there were three foods I could not stand: liver, beets and Brussels sprouts. That list has changed over the years. Thanks to different recipes and shifting taste buds, I now like Brussels sprouts and I’ve made my peace with beets. No one has ever tried to coax me into eating liver. But, being English, that’s why I call her mum, she never exposed me to okra. So now I’m down to two - that I know of.

We were at Cocoa Beach last week, the same spot where we’ve gone for the last 20 years. It’s great to spend time on the beach, where the land meets the water. You smell the salt air, feel the sand and the breeze, and hear the sound of waves rolling into the shore as they have from the beginning.

I’ve been to that stretch of beach my whole life and that spot the last twenty years in a row. The wind has always come out of the east, a sea breeze, and there are usually enough waves to at least boogie-board or body surf.

That’s a lot of fun. But it can also be dangerous when the waves are big, or there are rip tides. You all get that. And it is a metaphor for life. The land is stable, orderly. The water is at once inviting, yet chaotic; extremely powerful and potentially dangerous. And there are other risks. There are always sharks, maybe jellyfish, maybe a crab pinches your toe.

People are fundamentally unique in that we continuously look at the way things are and imagine how they could and should be better. That drives us to seek change. People tend to pursue social change in two ways; persuasion and force. In today’s Gospel, Jesus introduces a third way. While Jesus certainly taught and persuaded, the Kingdom ultimately spreads because people encounter him personally.

Persuasion involves generating ideas and positions, then sharing them so that they can be evaluated, improved and enacted. For example, “We take our shoes off when we enter the house,” or “You can only drive 15 miles per hour in a school zone.”  We hope better ideas win out over time and progress follows. We hope.

Last week we heard Jesus describe God’s extravagant sharing of the Word of the Kingdom as scattering seed on all sorts of soil. This morning’s Gospel touches on one of the most challenging issues of our existence. There is other seed. Not only do we see a lot of evil, there are, apparently, evil people in the world. This is more than flawed people making bad choices. It’s real evil, evil seeds sown by the evil one, the enemy, the devil, Satan himself.

Weeds are a great analogy because we all get that. They are a persistent issue everywhere from our landscaping to the cracks in our sidewalks. Weeds are a real problem in agriculture, and the problem can cut several ways. If you don’t control them, then they can hurt the crop yield, which not only affects the farmer but also the consumer. The lower the yield, the higher the price and the more people go hungry.

This weekend we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The thirteen British colonies were barely a year into the Revolutionary War that would continue another seven years. The founding fathers and the people they represented had faith in a vision they could not see, ideals they thought were rooted in God although they were yet developing.

These built upon their conviction that all men were created equal with inalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” “All men” meant all people, but of course that wasn’t true in 1776. Almost 4 million people, about 12.5% of the population were slaves. Native Americans were being steadily pushed out of their lands. Women couldn’t vote.