Pastoral Letter 11

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

It has been over eight weeks since we had our last worship service in the church sanctuary, which was on the 15^th of March. As the weeks go by, though the picture looks more promising, our yearning for our communal worship is growing week by week. We all miss the fellowship and the time we used to have together at our different gatherings, services and meetings. Our communication with the emails and the phone calls are doing some of the job, but we need more.

This difficult situation, with the social distancing restrictions, has made us value the church as our second family and the spiritual family, where we nurture and grow in our faith and enjoy the friendship, the support,  the care and the love of our brothers and sisters in Christ. With hope and anticipation, we look forward to the day when we will be able to come out of this pandemic and enjoy the daylight, by God’s grace.

On another level, though the government is easing the restrictions, the Uniting Church leadership still encouraging us not to have gatherings for worship. The Uniting Church Covid-19 Information Update that we received during the week says:

Presbytery Chairpersons, Ministers and Synod leaders met on the 11 May 2020 to review the situation regarding worship and groups meeting in Uniting Church facilities following the easing of restrictions in some states. 

With the safety and well-being of our community in mind, all leadership across the Synod agreed that the following guidance is provided to all entities across the Synod.

The consensus decision was that we should not be meeting in person for services of worship or face to face meeting in our churches.

It is anticipated that the effects of COVID-19 will continue to impact our lives for the foreseeable future. In the coming months we will be asked to make difficult choices between conflicting needs and imperatives. We must avoid framing our situation in terms of a false choice between reviving the economy — or our churches — and saving lives. Our commitment to supporting the safety and well-being of people must remain our priority. If we don’t continue our efforts to contain the virus, a new wave of infections and deaths will cause further pain.  All that we have gained in this time of isolation could be quickly lost. Reopening our buildings and resuming gatherings prematurely, even with the practice of social distancing, could unfairly force the choice between personal health and the desire to re-join the beloved congregation.

In this spirit we therefore: 

1. Request Uniting Church congregations to continue to suspend face to face worship.
2. Encourage and affirm the continued delivery of worship via alternate means.
3. Reaffirm the provision of essential services and activities that support vulnerable people in our communities, practicing strict social distancing and hygiene. (These activities are likely to have been clarified with Synod Office already, but should you have questions, please make contact).
4. Encourage Ministers and leadership teams in their continued efforts to:
5. foster social contact amongst their people in safe ways,
6. encourage people to maintain fellowship and pastoral care by other means: Australia Post, telephone, internet, Facebook, online resources (Saltbush, Insights, Facebook, etc), and
7. utilise the various options available on the Synod COVID-19 Hub for online activities as a church
8. Continue to encourage people to use this time as an opportunity for personal retreat and reflection, for enriching and renewing their life of faith, for discovering new ways of reaching out in friendship and support to others in faith, even in the midst of the challenges being experienced.

Synod affirms that:

1. A funeral or wedding may still be held, adhering to the numbers set by the State Government.
2. Pastoral Visits are permissible as long as no one is considered to be at risk. Should the Minister or Pastoral Visitor be in a vulnerable category, please make other arrangements. Prior to visiting, please make contact to ensure all parties are well and able to safely receive the visit.

Presbytery and Synod leaders will continue to meet each week and will continue to monitor future developments.

We have received another feedback from our last week’s Letter Box Note Drops. Chris have received a lovely response from Bev Adcock, which says:

Thank you for the lovely message. I am fine and trust you are too. You are top of my “must contact” list because I also wanted to thank your congregation for the “Thinking of You” very kind card and good wishes. That really is Pastoral care at its best.

You take good care of each other and thank you again, affectionately.

Bev

Attached you will find this Sunday’s Order of Service, please join us tomorrow morning at 9:30 am by reading the script, the Prayers, Responsive Reading, Bible Readings and sing the hymns and think about all those who are worshiping with you at the same time, but most importantly, let us remember all the mothers. I am attaching the hymns in music and video format to make it easy for you to sing along. Please do not forget to light a candle, if you wish, which represents Christ with us.

You will notice the name Bob Minton next to the Message. The reason: As I indicated in my last week’s letter that we were supposed to be in Armenia for our fourth trip, and earlier in the year I had asked Bob Minton to lead the service this Sunday. Bob called we on Monday and he told me that he is happy to prepare the message and share it with us. Many thanks to Bob for his willingness to provide the message. The hymns before and after the message are Bob’s choice, as well as the Prayer of Intercession.

Keep on praying and leave everything in the hands of our great God, who is our refuge and strength.

If you have any prayer points, please let me know and I will include in the next week’s letter.

Krikor

Your Minister

 

 

Message Summary

Love One Another

John 14:15-21

 

Let us pray!

O Lord, we pray, speak in the calming of our minds and in the longings of our heart. Speak. O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.

 

The important message that comes out of today’s gospel reading concerns the importance of our love for one another being a reflection of Jesus’ love for us. “If you love me,” Jesus says “you will keep my commandments” and later on in this conversation that Jesus is having with his disciples he says “My command is this: love one another as I have loved you”.

If then, we are to love, as Jesus loved us, surely that means that love is to be expressed in the way we relate to one another – beginning within the family circle.

But, these days – what is the family circle?

Early on in Mark’s gospel, when Jesus was told that his mother and brothers were waiting outside and wanted to see him, he asked: “But who is my mother?  Who are my brothers? “And, looking around him at those who were sitting around Him, he said: “Here are my mother and my brothers.  Whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother.”

Jesus was pushing back the boundaries of who was regarded as “in” and who was regarded as “out” within the Jewish community. He was giving us an early picture of the extended family. One of the painful realities about life nowadays is that many people live alone, many have experienced circumstances which have deprived them of any real human family. That is why it is so crucial for the church not only to be a community where family ties are strengthened and expanded, but also for it to be the community where lonely people, young and old, and those who have been deeply hurt because of problems within their immediate family circle can know themselves to be welcomed and accepted into a true family of God.

Some time ago, we met up with a couple of old friends who had moved into a country area and they were telling us how difficult it has been to find a welcoming church community. There are a number of small churches in the area where they have settled, and they eventually attended one for a number of months. There was a meeting one Sunday to look at ways of attracting people to church and one of our friends told the meeting that they had been attending that church for 5 months and only 3 people could address them by name – and the minister wasn’t one of the three! Maybe if they were more enthusiastic in their welcoming people, they might have more members. They now attend another church which is much friendlier!

We all need to know ourselves to be welcomed and accepted by God, but equally as important, we need to share that information with others inside and outside the church.

The words of Jesus “Love one another as I have loved you” resonate over and through the centuries and yet many of the acts of love that Jesus did were just too radical for the people of his day to carry on… He ate with sinners…He talked publicly with women…He fought against the legalism of the religious leaders of His day as he tried to cast the die of love  – but the imprint of years of tradition was just too strong in so many areas and so, much of Jesus’ teachings were watered down if not conveniently forgotten.  You just have to read many of the letters in Church newspapers to realise that many church members are having problems coping with the movement and changes in society which are being reflected in church – security is then sought in the past. Covid – 19 is changing the way we go about our daily lives in and out of the church. But – families have to live in the present and cope with the movement and pressures of the present. So, we – the church family – also have to live very intentionally in the present and see how Jesus’ words relate to today “Love each other, as I have loved you.”

God loves us unreservedly – He accepts us as we are – and it is out of that love and acceptance that repentance and change comes – out of the relationship that is first established through love. One of the major historical problems that Christians have to contend with – and an image that people outside the church have of us as Christians is that we are inclined to judge first – if that happens, the possibilities for love and acceptance and healing are minimised.  We love because Christ first loved us.

There’s a story – that illustrates that point. The mother in the story was so certain that her little son would come bouncing in to greet her on her birthday at some unearthly hour in the morning as small children are wont to do! She awoke early and waited – but nothing happened – the house was suspiciously quiet.  She got up and looked in his bedroom – no one there – or in any other room in the house – the last room she looked in was their newly decorated lounge room with its off-white shag carpet and newly upholstered lounge suite.  As she wondered where on earth he might be, he burst in the back door – saturated from the rain which was  falling and ran into the room, his hands behind him, his mud covered rubber boots brushing against the lounge and leaving marks which always come out of the carpets on the TV advertisements, but never quite so at home – he brought his hands around from behind his back – and there was a bedraggled, but colourful bunch of flowers.

She gathered him, and the flowers and the mud in one big embrace… I ask you, who at a time like that – would have seen the mud as more important as the love?

God demonstrated through Jesus that the love is more important than the mud.  It is as we realise and accept that kind of love – love that cleanses the mud off, that we change, and make the effort to be ‘mud-free’.  And that’s the kind of love that Jesus is talking about here – an “all-embracing love”’  Jesus demonstrated that love most forcibly when he washed his disciples’ feet – it is that kind of love which moves us to reach out to those who are hungry for something without knowing what it is that they are yearning for.

Today we celebrate the reality of Jesus’ love for us and it is also a day when we pray that, through His risen power – that power He promises us – the Holy Spirit – that we can truly love one another as Jesus loves us.

Robert (Bob) Minton