Pastoral Letter 102

Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,

Greetings to you all in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

I write this Pastoral Letter as follow up to my email that I sent during the week to confirm that we are ready to reopen our doors for much awaited worship, which will include Communion followed by a fellowship Morning Tea. We look forward to Sunday for service and fellowship.

Once again, a special thanks to our dear friend Bob Minton for taking the last two Sunday Worship Services. He is always ready to help us when we are in need.

If for any reason you will not be able to come to church for our first face-to-face service of the year, please join us Sunday morning from home, light a candle, have a small roll and a cup of wine or juice for Communion, follow the Order of Service and sing along the hymns.

Be well and safe, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love and let us know if any member of the congregation that you know of needs our help and prayers.

Please pray specially for Philip, Alison, her son-in-law and the grandchildren remembering their mother and grandmother, Bette Graham, who passed away in January 2021. Pray also for Alan Russell, sons Timothy, Christopher and Anthony, the daughters-in-law and the grandchildren remembering their wife, mother and grandmother, Esther Russell, who also passed away in January 2021. Bette and Esther were committed members of St. Andrew’s and very dear to the church family. They are greatly missed.

Here are some more prayer points for this week:

1. Pray for those who are suffering with COVID.
2. Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
3. Pray for all those who are suffering under hardship and poverty.
4. Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.
5. Pray and give thanks with all you have and remember that everything is given by God with His grace.
6. Pray for each other.

Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.

Best Regards,

Krikor

MESSAGE

The Call to Discipleship

Isaiah 6:1-8, Luke 5:1-11

A pastor has written: I have this recurring nightmare that goes something like this. It’s Sunday morning. I’m at church. The service is just about ready to start. I realize that I forgot to write a sermon. Why? I’m not sure. The church service is starting and I’m frantically trying to figure out what I’m going to do, what I’m going to say, realizing that I am completely unprepared. I’ve talked to a couple of other pastors, and strangely enough they’ve had similar dreams and I don’t think that we’re alone. You’ve probably had that dream where you are completely unprepared for something: a presentation at work, not having tickets for something, walking into a high school or college classroom for a final’s exam that you didn’t know you were supposed to take. You wake up and you hope it’s just a dream because it’s not a good feeling to be unprepared.

Usually, we have this kind of feeling when we have anxiety about the tasks that we have to do. I have had similar feelings and dreams the night before a big day of a planned program. Sometimes I think that I will not be there on time, and I will miss preparing a few things on time. This is a strange feeling, but it is so common.

This is a feeling of unpreparedness. If we are not prepared to do a task we will definitely feel anxious.

The question is: “Are we ready to be a disciple of Jesus?”

This morning we are going to look to God’s Word and to two men who were called to be disciples of the Lord and see what it takes to be prepared to be a disciple of Jesus.

The first person that we look at is Peter, the Galilean fisherman who we heard about in our gospel reading this morning. Jesus came to Peter and three of his fellow fishermen and called them to be His full-time disciples. Did you notice that Jesus didn’t ask them? He didn’t say: “So are you guys ready to my disciples?” Jesus simply said: “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men” (Luke 5:10). Peter had already realized something about himself when he had personally witnessed the divine power of Jesus with the miraculous catch of fish on that day. Peter realized that the man who stood before him was none other than the Lord God Almighty and so he fell to his knees and pleaded: “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). Peter realized that on his own, he was woefully unprepared to stand in the presence of the Lord Jesus, no less, be a disciple of the Lord Jesus. Peter realized the same thing that Isaiah had come to realize 750 years earlier.

Isaiah was living in the southern part of Israel called Judah during the reign of King Uzziah, a powerful king who reigned for nearly 50 years. It was during this time that the Lord gave Isaiah a vision – a vision that began with awesome terror. You have the Lord sitting on the throne of a king which is “high and exalted” a position of power and authority. The train of his robe “filled the temple” demonstrating the vastness and majesty of the Lord. There are these 6-winged angelic creatures called “seraphim” hovering above the Lord, covering their faces in the presence of the Lord. The seraphs are calling back and forth to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). Their glorious proclamation shakes the very foundations of this heavenly temple and fills it with smoke. Like Peter, Isaiah quickly realized who he was standing before, that this was none other than the Lord God Almighty and his reaction was nearly identical: “Woe to me! I am ruined!” (Isaiah 6:5).

At first this reaction might seem a little strange to us. We often talk about how good it will be to see the Lord. But there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of goodness in Isaiah’s vision, only terror. The truth is that it is only good to be in the presence of God if we are holy as God is holy. And Isaiah realized that he was anything but holy. He said: “For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:5). Our mouth reveals what is in our heart. The anger and resentment that lives in our heart demonstrates itself in hurtful and hateful words. Greed and selfishness leads to demeaning others and lying, in order to get ahead. These are the lips and hearts that have been stained by sin, that cannot live in the presence of a holy God. Isaiah later wrote: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away” (Isaiah 64:6). The writer to the Hebrews describes what it is like to be a sinner in the presence of a holy God when he wrote: “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).

The reason for God appearing to Isaiah in a vision is to issue this call. He is making a rhetorical question, giving Isaiah the opportunity to “volunteer.” Note Isaiah’s enthusiasm. Where does he get such confidence to even volunteer? Just a moment ago he had been in despair over the judgment he expected to fall upon him as a miserable sinner, and now he has the courage to act as the Almighty’s messenger. Where did he get that self-assurance from?

It is the atonement of God that caused Isaiah to turn from fear to confidence. He then can zealously volunteer for service, not because he is confident in his ability, but because he is confident in God’s mercy. This was truly the commission of Isaiah

Like Peter and Isaiah, we must admit that to stand before a holy God, covered in the filth of sin is a terrifying thought. By nature, we are completely and utterly unprepared to stand before God, like the feeling we have a night before a great day full of tasks to be done. Because we are not ready and prepared. Instead of discipleship or being a disciple, we deserve to be banished from God’s presence for eternity.

But Jesus said to Peter? “Don’t be afraid” (Luke 5:10). We might wonder, how could we not be afraid to stand before a holy God? We know what we are like. We know what God is like. How do we ever stand a chance? There is only one thing that can take that terror away, and that is what the Lord showed Isaiah in his vision. Just listen: “Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for’” (Isaiah 6:6,7). The altar was the place where sacrifices were made. With this vision, God was showing Isaiah that because of the sacrifice that the Lord had made for Isaiah, his sin was taken away. The sin that once made him an object of God’s wrath had been removed. Isaiah was clean of his sin. He was holy in God’s sight.

Peter would get to see that perfect sacrifice that God would offer at the altar of the cross, not in some vision, but with his own eyes. Later a fellow disciple John wrote about Jesus: “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). The sin that once made us objects of God’s wrath, God has placed upon his Son Jesus. Jesus has suffered that wrath of God for the sins that have creeped in our hearts, and that have been revealed through our words and actions. The lack of patience, the jealousy over what others have and we don’t, the arrogance that leads us to look down on others. For those and every sin that makes us unclean, Jesus has taken the wrath of God and sacrificed His life. Jesus has removed the guilt of our sin so that we can stand confidently before a Holy God and without fear.

Yes, like Isaiah and like Peter we no longer need to be afraid to stand before God. We are fully prepared to be a disciple of the Lord, not because of who we are, but because of what Jesus has done for us and made us holy. That’s what made Isaiah, that’s what made Peter, that’s what makes us, and every Christian fully equipped to be a disciple of Jesus. Regardless of our limitations and shortfalls, we are called to be His disciples and we can if we are ready and well prepared.

Isaiah’s reaction to this good news of God’s forgiveness is rather memorable. He hears the deliberations of the Trinity: “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:8). And we can almost picture Isaiah being like the one who cannot contain his excitement at the thought of being chosen. With great joy he said: “Here am I. Send me!” Peter and his fellow fishermen also had that same eagerness as we’re told that after Jesus called them to be his disciples, “So they…left everything and followed him” (Luke 5:11). Maybe we look at that reaction and think: “We wish we felt that way, that we had that eagerness and that excitement to serve the Lord and to follow Him as one of His disciples.”

I don’t think that it’s so much a feeling, as it is an appreciation of what God has done for us. This is an appreciation that comes from repeatedly remembering what we have been rescued from. The Lord has not “rescued” us from a puddle in the parking lot. The Lord has rescued us from a tsunami that was about to sweep us away. From that terrifyingly hopeless situation that sin has caused, the Lord reached down and pulled us to safety, to stand securely upon the sacrifice of Jesus, offered for us and for all at the cross, so that we might live with Him for eternity, and that we might live for Him today and every day of our life. As we listen to Jesus and learn from Him, the Lord is calling and equipping us to live as His disciples. It is the equipping that is taking place right now, as we recall what Christ has done for us in His mercy. It is the equipping that takes place as we come to the Lord’s Supper and receive Jesus’ body and blood with bread and wine and hear Hm say: “Your sins are forgiven.”

When we regularly stop to stand before the Lord and listen to Him, to see our sin and the God who has fully rescued us from it, we are better equipped to say: “Here am I! Send me!” Send us into the world and into our daily life and help us faithfully use the abilities and relationships that You have given us to glorify You. Send us into my neighbourhood to be a witness of Your kindness and compassion. Send us to serve You in whatever way You allow us, Lord Almighty.

Dear friends, are we ready? The Lord has and continues to make us ready to be His disciple through the sacrifice that He has offered for our sins. May that sacrifice of Jesus bring us peace and empower us as disciples of the Lord Christ Jesus.

Amen!