Pastoral Letter 176
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace and Peace to you all.
Regardless of the challenges we face as a congregation, we are still on track and doing the best we can keeping up with our ministry, being faithful to our mission. We hope soon we will be able to start our conversation with our neighbouring Lane Cove Uniting Church in regard to the future and the possibilities to work together.
Our traditional annual Market Morning is next Saturday, 5 August 2023 from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm. I am sure we will be able to get good results and allocate some money for charitable purpose. But still, we have a lot to do in preparation for the big day. Set up will be during the week from Wednesday 2 August morning. Please be ready to help as we do every year and if you have any questions, please ask Virginia.
Please save the date Sunday 10 September 2023, which marks the 100th anniversary of the laying of the Foundation Stone of our beautiful Sanctuary as well as the 121st Anniversary of the start of the Services. We will have a special service at 2:00 pm with many guests, church leaders, families, friends and dignitaries. We are in the process of finalising the details. The invitation letters and the Flyer will go out very soon and we hope many will come and join us on the day.
God willing, I will be on leave 6-31 August and be on a trip in the Middle East with my daughter Lori. While I am away, James Knowles from England will take the service on Sunday 13 August, LCU Chaplain Liam McKenna on Sunday 20 August and Sunday 27 August we will be joining Crows Nest Uniting Church for Sunday Worship. My thanks to James and Liam.
If you will not be able to be with us tomorrow morning Worship Service, please light a candle and join us following the attached Order of Service.
Be safe and well, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love. Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Here are some prayer points for this week:
- Pray for the coming week, as we prepare for the Market Morning. Ask for God’s help and strength, which we need more and more every year.
- Pray for Artsakh as they go through the toughest time with the dire situation resulting in hunger, starvation and death. Clearly the people are in a humanitarian crisis and the only road of life is still closed for more than seven months, while the international community keeps silent.
- Pray for world peace in the world.
- Pray for those who suffer, who are persecuted and abused.
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for those who are facing natural disasters and the global warming.
- Pray my upcoming trip and to have a safe journey.
Best Regards,
Krikor
Another Seven Years!
Genesis 29:15-28 Romans 8:28-39
Some years ago, during a trip I had the chance to see some of my old friends and seminary boarding mates, which took me back many years; to those days that we spent together as boarding students at the Near East School of Theology. Many memories came from those days, especially we remembered the tricks or the pranks, such as putting smelly garbage bin in a friend’s room who used to close the doors and the windows tightly even on warm nights, while sleeping. Or fully winded old-style clock in a big empty milk can on the top of a wardrobe set the alarm for 2:30 am; to reach the can to stop the alarm, you needed a chair or a table. Or the day someone getting back from a semester break and finding the room furniture totally rearranged. We used to play on our friends. It was quite amusing to do such tricks and was always fun to watch people storm around the campus after they had been tricked, specially someone who had been doing lots of tricks on others and now finally “they get what they deserve.”
It seems that a similar thing happened to Jacob as we read the story in Genesis chapter 29. After his continuing deceit and treason to his brother Esau, and later to his father Isaac, we see Laban deceived Jacob. Jacob born second in line to his brother came out grabbing at his brother’s Esau’s heel, he tricked his brother and charged a shocking price for a simple bowl of stew, and he dressed up in a costume to trick his own father into blessing the wrong son while lying on his deathbed. And here we see him come storming out of his tent the morning after his wedding realising that he had been tricked and he was given the wrong wife after seven years of labour. He gave seven years of his life in exchange for beautiful Rachel, yet when he woke up in the morning realised, he had married her sister Leah. We are not sure why he did not realise that Rachel was not the one who spent the night. Whether it was the lack of lighting, or perhaps too much partying and alcohol, we may never know. But somehow, Jacob consummated his marriage, not with Rachel, but with her older sister Leah.
After reading the scripture narrative this morning we can picture the horrified expression on Jacob’s face, who was tricked by his own flesh and blood, his own uncle Laban. Imagine thinking you had married one person and waking up in the morning to discover that you had married another. Imagine having already given up seven years of your life in labour, and now being tricked into spending another seven years of your life in labour so that you can get what you were promised originally.
We don’t know what Jacob thought about, while he was working in the fields and it is not clear what kind of work he did, but probably he might have been herding animals, tending the land, hunting, or any number of other tasks typically performed by Bedouins. Probably during those first seven year he thought about Rachel and time passed quickly for him because he was so deeply in love with her.
On the other hand, Scripture tells us little about what happened during the second set of seven years. We don’t know if time passed quickly or slowly. We don’t know what Jacob’s attitude was, and we don’t know what he thought about during the long hard days of work for his uncle. We can only draw conclusions based upon what we know of Jacob’s life so far. It is fair to suggest that Jacob probably woke up every morning with the insistent reminder that he had been tricked. I doubt a day went by when he didn’t remember his uncle’s broken promise.
Broken promise! People, we, make promises and sometimes and maybe usually do not keep them. While on the other hand when God makes a promise, He keeps it to the point, though in His own way and in His own time, which sometimes we do not understand why, and we are puzzled.
There was an interesting thing in Jacob’s life. On the one hand, he had a supernatural experience at Bethel, where he had a dream of a ladder between earth and heaven with angels going up and down. For him, that was a vision of God being there with him. That’s why he erected a stone and called the place Bethel. On the other hand, he had bad experience in Haran, where his dreams of having a beautiful wife was shattered and the promise was broken. He was tormented when he was confronted with the prospect of giving up another seven years of his life in service to his uncle, because of a broken promise.
This exemplifies the actions of people, when they promise to act and do certain things, but instead they often let us down and break their promises. When promises are broken, we tend to become more bitter, cynical and disappointed because a promise didn’t come true.
Unfortunately, we live in a society that doesn’t value a promise as much as it used to. Marriages end in divorce, business deals end in lawsuits, partnerships turn bad, promises made by candidates before local, state and federal elections are usually changed or not kept. Promises are generally broken, and we don’t believe anyone can keep their word.
In similar situations what are we supposed to do?
Where or to whom should we turn?
We need something reliable, something we can trust in, something which gives us hope, a real hope.
According to the scripture the best place to turn to is the promise of God and His Kingdom with the conviction that He is always faithful to His promises. As we said earlier, we don’t know what Jacob was thinking during those seven years, but we hope he was focusing on the Kingdom of Heaven and His promise given to him at Bethel.
“I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (28:13b-15)
The same promise is echoed in Romans 8 where Paul wrote: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose….For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, [nor Uncle Laban], nor any powers, neither height nor depth, [nor broken promises], nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (8:28 and 38-39)
We should think that as Jacob was working for two sets of seven years to get what he desired, he held on to the promises of God with all he had, believing that God would be with him until God had done what He had promised.
This morning, the promises of God are being offered to us. Not the promises of a pastor, or the promises of a church, or a denomination, but the promises of God. When everything around us crumbles and falls, still we have the promises of God. When we’ve been tricked, and deceived, still we have the promises of God. We may not be able to stand on the promises of people, but we can plant our feet firmly on the promises of God; the promises which will lead us to the Kingdom of Heaven.
In the gospel of Matthew chapter 13, we have a series of seven parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. The first two are well known parables, the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Weeds, followed by five short parables where the Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a Mustard Seed, Yeast, Treasure, Fine Pearls and Fishermen’s’ Net. It is clear that all these deal with the promises of God. The parable of the Sower makes clear that in order to receive the promises of God we should be like the good soil which gives produces hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown as seeds. The parable of the Weeds reveals that the weeds that grow with the wheat is gathered first and burned, while the good wheat is gathered into the barn to provide the daily need for bread. And the remaining short parables present the blessings of God which are promised to us. All that are promised, have a great value or gives more blessings.
The lesson we learn from all this is that we should rely on God and His promises, which are of great value, rather than to rely on vain promises of people, who could easily disappoint us with their tricks and unfulfilled promises.
God made a promise to Jacob; Jacob the liar, tricker, deceitful and He kept His promise.
God has made many promises to us, and He will keep them if we put our trust in Him in all circumstances.
God is with us. He is our guide, our rock, our hope, our salvation, our redeemer and our father, who cares and loves us and will never abandon us. He makes promises and He keeps them.
We don’t need to do seven years of labour to receive His promises. He gives and offers everything free out of love. But as we said earlier, in His own time and in His own ways. In this case the seven years could be seven years or seventy times seven years of prayer, as we should forgive seven times or seventy times seven.
At the end of the day as in Jacob’s case at the end of the “Another Seven Years”, God fulfilled His promise and blessed Jacob with a family of 12 sons and made them the twelve tribes of the people of Israel.
God makes promises and keeps them always regardless!
Amen!