Pastoral Letter 103
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.
It was good to reopen our doors after five weeks of worshiping at home. It was clear to all those who came to this year’s first face-to-face worship, that they have missed fellowship and worshiping together. It was good that it was the first Sunday of the month and we had a COVID-safe Communion and Morning Tea after the Service. We had so much to share with each other and that’s why we didn’t realise that we were sitting around the tables for more than an hour. I hope and pray that we will keep on worshiping face-to-face the rest of the year. I will keep sending a brief Pastoral Letter with the Order of Service, Message and hymns every week for those who will not be able to join us on Sunday.
You will receive the delayed newsletter this week as well. Please note the announcement and dates of our activities that we plan to have in the coming weeks.
Be safe and well, 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.
Here are some more prayer points for this week:
- Pray for those who are suffering with COVID.
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for all those who are suffering under hardship and poverty.
- Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.
- Pray and give thanks with all you have and remember that everything is given by God with His grace.
- Pray for each other.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Best Regards,
Krikor
MESSAGE
Blessings and Woes – A Tale of Two Kingdoms
Luke 6:17-26
A Tale of Two Cities, is Charles Dickens’ best-known work of historical fiction, written in 1859 and set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The novel is claimed to be one of the best-selling novels of all time.
Dickens opens the novel with a sentence that has become famous:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
This sounds like the passages that we heard today from the book of Jeremiah and the Gospel of Luke. Both passages speak of curses and blessings as we read in Jeremiah, and the blessings and woes that Jesus gives in His well-known Sermon of the Mount. As if these two passages talk about ‘A Tale of Two Kingdoms’. Hence it is fitting to title this message “Blessings and Woes – A Tale of Two Kingdoms”. The language used in both Jeremiah and Luke resonates a similar paradoxical idea, that represents two sides of the reality of life, human character, action or behaviour; but it is important to choose the right one, or to be on the right side.
Our gospel lesson this morning is Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount. Like the Sermon on the Mount, this is known as the Sermon on the Plain, when Jesus came down from the mountain to a level place (a plain), after spending the night praying and choosing His twelve disciples. This version of His Sermon is a snapshot of what the Christian life should be like. This preaching does not weigh wealth over poverty, or being well fed over going hungry, but it is more of a statement of how one should live as a follower of Christ Jesus, as one lives in the Kingdom of God. It is a matter of choice. A choice to be either in the Kingdom of God and do or live as Jesus instructs or in the Kingdom of the world and do or live as the world tells us.
The people in Jesus’ day thought that if you were rich, successful, happy and popular this was because you were favoured by God. But if you were poor, miserable, and rejected, or you had a disability or a terrible accident this was because you, or a relative had done something to displease God. Or it was the consequence of a sin committed by the parents.
But Jesus says that is wrong for even those who are poor, who are miserable, who are rejected, those with a disability, because they are all welcomed into the Kingdom of God.
Those beliefs of the early Jews are still alive today in our modern world and society. The theology of glory, or the prosperity ‘gospel’ says if you are faithful then God will reward you materially. This theology of glory also says if you are sick and are prayed for but do not get better, then they are told it was because of their lack of faith. So, then the ill person becomes guilty and falls into despair.
But Jesus says woe to all of that. Everyone belongs or should belong to the Kingdom of God. It is our choice.
In Jesus’ teachings, He says that all people are welcomed into the kingdom but as He said to the rich young ruler, to the Pharisees, and to those who had a high value of themselves, it might be more difficult for them to enter the Kingdom of God, because they valued themselves more than they did Jesus, and His Kingdom.
Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most respected leaders of modern history. A Hindu, Gandhi nevertheless admired Jesus and often quoted from the Sermon on the Mount. Once when the missionary Stanley Jones met with Gandhi, he asked him: “Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?“
Gandhi replied: “Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Apparently, Gandhi’s rejection of Christianity grew out of an incident that happened when he was a young man practicing law in South Africa. He had become attracted to the Christian faith, had studied the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, and was seriously exploring becoming a Christian. And so, he decided to attend a church service. As he came up the steps of the large church where he intended to go, a white South African elder of the church blocked his way at the door. “Where do you think you’re going, kaffir?” the man asked Gandhi in a confrontational tone of voice. He replied: “I’d like to attend worship here.”
The church elder roared at him: “There’s no room for Kaffirs in this church. Get out of here or I’ll have my assistants throw you down the steps.”
Imagine that Gandhi was not good enough to worship in a church. This is what Jesus is talking about in the Sermon on the Plain. Everyone is welcomed into the Kingdom of God. No one is excluded!
Everyone is welcomed and everyone in the kingdom needs to help each other. The rich can give to the poor, the well fed can give food to the hungry, the healthy can help the sick, the able bodied can assist the disabled, the joyful can ease the burden of those who mourn, and on and on we can go.
The Sermon is not about fighting one group against another, but is more about how to live, what kind of lifestyle one needs to live in the Kingdom of God.
Life is no brief candle, but it is a sort of splendid torch which we have got a hold of for the moment, and we want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
As we are in the season of Epiphany, the season of light, so I ask: How is our candle burning? Do we reach out to those who need a hand?
When our brother is in trouble, we have to reach out our one hand to him cause that’s what it’s there for. And when our heart is troubled, we can reach out to God with our other hand. This is exactly what Jesus is talking about in this Sermon. As members of the Kingdom of God, we need to reach out our hand to our neighbour and reach out our hand to God. As kingdom people, we are grounded by those two hands, one hand out to God, one hand out to our neighbour. This is the lifestyle which Jesus is telling us to live as kingdom people.
Psalms one has been called the gatekeeper of the book of Psalms. It is the doorway into the entire collection of Psalms, and in it, we have the great theme of the psalms, and in fact the great theme of the Bible is revealed.
We, as Christians, all are looking for the pathway to blessedness. Every childhood story or fairy tale always ended: “And they lived happily ever after.” Why that recurring theme? Why must these fairy tales end this way? Because from our childhood days, that is what we all have wanted. From the pursuit of education, career, spouses, children, possessions, and everything, we all aspired to enter a life experience in which we live happily ever after! That is the aspiration upon which this great kingdom was formed.
The Psalmist chooses to begin this Psalm by revealing the pathway that we all are seeking “to live happy ever after! Because the Holy Bible is a book of blessedness. It shows us that it is God’s will and desire to bless His creation!
Pathway to a blessed life is maintained by right choices. The choices we make will determine the way we walk, how we stand and with whom we sit. Psalm 1 presents two Pathways to follow, and only two ways to live: the way of the world or the way of the Word, God’s word. Those who “walk in the way of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners, and sit in the seat of mockers” are people who have chosen to follow the culture and are consumed with the world’s values and ways. That pathway seems wider and easier, yet it leads to destruction.
The world has a loud voice and tells us what to eat, drink, wear, and to live. Its instructions do not lead to life. The Psalmist understands that we all desire and pursue happiness. Every day we make numerous choices in deciding what course of action will add to our well-being—what will make us happy. Making these choices is the pursuit of happiness. The results of our choices are not all equal: we soon discover that choosing some pleasures, especially following momentary impulses, leads not to happiness but to pain. But if we use God’s Word as our guide, our sense of insight, recalling experience, we learn to choose those choices that are really in our best interest.
The prophet Jeremiah says: “This is what the Lord says: ‘Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the streams. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit’.” (Jer. 17:7-8)
If we, as believers, want to be successful in transforming our minds and hearts, we must intentionally follow the pathway of the blessed life, seeking to experience fuller life, complete liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Pathway to the blessed life will allow us to walk a different path, a narrow path, but a path that leads to life and to eternal life.
All these are summed up in the choices we make. It is our responsibility to choose between the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of the World. The Bible sets before us a tale of two kingdoms. Let us not be lost in the path that leads us to destruction and makes us worthy of the woes that God gives in Jeremiah and Jesus declares in Luke. But to choose the path that leads to life and abundant life, full of God’s blessings, even if we feel we are poor, hungry, weak and people hate and reject us.
Let us walk on the path that leads us to eternal blessings making us a fruitful tree that is planted by the streams of water, which yields its fruit in season.
Amen!