Pastoral Letter 25
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace and peace to you all in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I hope you are all well and safe. This week we heard some promising news about the possibility of having a vaccine, hopefully by the end of the year, free of charge. We need such good news after 25 weeks of ups and downs. In June-July we had great hopes to reopen our doors for our regular meetings and gatherings. Then in late July with the Victorian second wave of infections and a rising number of cases NSW, our hopes were dashed, as some areas in greater Sydney were identified as hot spots. Some schools closed, new rules and restrictions for school activities are put in place, mainly with music and sport activities. Three congregations from our zone decided to close again, responding to the Synod’s strong recommendations. Now we have just two churches in our zone still having services, with COVID-19 safety plans in place. It is not promising, but we keep on praying and hoping that this crisis ends soon, by God’s grace.
Unfortunately, deaths around the world are climbing towards the one million figure, with major problems in the US, Brazil, India, Middle East and sadly Syria and in particular Aleppo. Aleppo with its two million population has officially registered thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths in a short period of time. Unofficial numbers are much higher. All the hospitals are full, not being able to cope with the situation and the lack of much needed medication. Sadly, many doctors have died, including many Armenians, some of them from the Armenian Evangelical community. Our brothers and sisters need our prayers.
In regards to Lebanon the suffering people still need our prayers and support. I would like to thank all those who have made donations responding to the AMAA’s appeal for the Lebanon Emergency Relief. Please continue to pray and if you can, donate.
Please continue to pray with me for the people of Lebanon, to show our solidarity to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Pray for Aleppo and seek God’s comfort for those who have lost loved ones from the deadly virus.
As we continue to do what we have for the past 24 weeks, please join the other members tomorrow morning in worship, following the Order of Service. Please light a candle and pray for Lebanon. Thanks to Mark for suggesting most of the hymns for this Sunday’s Worship.
Continue to pray and remember the following points in your prayers:
- Pray for Lebanon as the country goes through a difficult time.
- Continue to pray for those countries who are still in the midst of the pandemic, where the number of cases of COVID-19 is still growing. In particular for Aleppo.
- Pray for those who are struggling financially, those who have lost loved ones and are still in pain and for those who are not well and lonely.
- Pray for world peace.
If you have any prayer points, please let me know and I will include them in the next week’s letter.
Krikor
Who Do You Say I Am?
What About You?
Matthew 16:13-20
Our Gospel lesson tells us that Jesus and His disciples made their way to Caesarea Philippi, situated 40 km north of the Sea of Galilee and at the base of Mt. Hermon. Caesarea Philippi is the location of one of the largest springs feeding the Jordan River. This abundant water supply has made the area very fertile and attractive for religious worship. Numerous temples were built in this city in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
The Gospel narratives tell us that Jesus and His disciples travelled around, from city to city, from town to town and from village to village. Last week we looked at the story of the Canaanite woman in the region of Tyre and Sidon in Matthew 15, which follows with the story of the feeding of the four thousand (according to Matthew) on a mountainside of the Sea of Galilee. Then they went to the vicinity of Magadan, on the North West of the Sea of Galilee, and we read that they crossed the sea (the lake), where the Pharisees and the Sadducees tested Jesus, demanding Him to show a sign from heaven, to interpret the signs of the times. After that confrontation, Jesus warned His disciples from the Pharisees and the Sadducees against their teachings and called the disciples “people of little faith”.
Then they headed to the North, to Caesarea Philippi and as they walked on the road, Jesus asked them: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
With this question Jesus begins an interesting discussion, to teach His disciples a good lesson about His identity and their faith. We could be sure that He had engaged in similar discussions with them on many occasions. On this occasion they tell Him that people are saying all sorts of things—as people tend to do. Some say He is John the Baptist, recently beheaded by Herod, come back from the dead. Others say He is the prophet Elijah, who was thought to return before the end times. Others say Jeremiah, another one of Israel’s prophets, who had his own tensions with the authorities and suffered mightily for it.
These answers of the people made it clear that they didn’t have any idea who He really was, why He was with them and what His mission was. It seemed that no one had understood exactly what or whom they were witnessing. For sure they had never seen someone like Jesus before. They were following Jesus for a while now, but they did not fully grasp the truth about Him.
The various answers that people said, probably were not much different from what the disciples would say. So, Jesus turned the question to His disciples, and asked what seemed to be the question He wanted to ask all along: “But what about you? Who do you say I am?”
Because they had spent some time with Him and followed Him, it seems they got it right. Peter, as their spokesman and the outspoken disciple, declared and said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” or “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
But what did it mean to call Jesus “the Messiah, the Son of the living God?”
But what was their understanding of the Messiah?
Was He really the promised One, as the people were expecting? Even though Jesus seemed to be satisfied with Peter’s response, considering what had happened earlier (and what happens later), Peter didn’t exactly know what it meant to call Jesus the Messiah—definitely not at that point, at least.
Why? Because Jesus was not going to be the Messiah anyone expected.
The Messiah was not expected to be a healer or a person of wisdom, but was expected to be the one who was going to come like a warrior with a sword, taking down the cruel powers and delivering God’s people from the oppressions of the Romans.
But instead, Jesus came as a poor peasant, not a warrior. And instead of being the One who should have purified the bad and unclean, on the contrary He sat with the unclean and had meals with the sinners and tax collectors, like Zacchaeus. He came near them; He didn’t throw them out, and He certainly didn’t overthrow the foreign rulers. Instead, He was the One who was destroyed, captured, tortured, killed on a cross by the Roman rulers.
Naturally, Jesus knew He was not the kind of Messiah Peter was expecting. In fact, after praising Peter for the good answer he gave and stated that He was going to build His church on Peter, the Rock, and the gates of Hades will not be able to destroy and overcome it, in the following passage we see Jesus calling Peter “Satan.”
Jesus told His disciples that He had to go to die in Jerusalem and Peter tried to tell Jesus that this couldn’t happen. Jesus was going to save the world, but not in the way anyone would think. So, even though Peter got it right at the start, he still got it wrong.
If we shift and ask Jesus’ question to ourselves, what would be our answer? We could and should answer saying: Jesus is Lord, the Son of the Living God, the Saviour, the Messiah and so on.
But what does that mean to us?
Is that what we really think of Him?
Is He our Lord and Saviour?
Is He the One, to whom we trust fully and rely on Him in everything we do?
Sometimes, unfortunately, saying “Jesus is the Lord, the Saviour and the Promised One” becomes mechanical, with no meaning. It could be a statement in the Creed, said out loud or chanted in the form of a hymn.
This shouldn’t just be a statement we make or proclaim on occasions. But it should be a life or a way of life that we live with full confidence and faith. The Christian Faith is a journey—an exciting journey of getting to know who God is, walking with Him and talking with Him in our journey of life. And as we do that, we learn how to put our faith into practice. Peter had to learn many things to be able to follow Christ and walk in His steps to be that real Rock upon which Jesus said that He will build His Church.
Peter had to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and pay attention to what God was doing and will do, using Him, the other disciples, the apostles and each and every believer and witness.
To follow in His ways and steps, first we need to know Him much better. It’s the same way with our friends, co-workers and colleagues, the members of any kind of group, including the members of any congregation. At first, we only know them in a very shallow and superficial way. But, as we spend time with them, in relationships, we come to know them much better.
It was the same with us, here at Longueville St. Andrew’s family, our relationship as minister and congregation. We didn’t know each other initially, and perhaps we had our doubts if this would work, when more than eight years ago we met as strangers. But as the years went by, we knew and learnt more about each other and we tried to understand our different cultures together. And we did this with the love that we have to God and our Lord and Saviour, who brought us together to continue our journey for at least this period in our ministry.
It’s the same with Jesus. The more time we spend with Him, the more we are in ministry with and for Him…the more we come to learn about Him.
Let us all ask ourselves the question Jesus asked His disciples that day: “Who do you say Jesus is?” Not just “What do the Creeds say about Jesus?” Or “Who have other people told us Jesus is?”
“Who do we say Jesus is?”
Let us wonder together for what we really mean when we say, with Peter, that Jesus is the Messiah, Son of the Living God. Or that Jesus is Lord, or Jesus is the Second Person, the Son after the Father, mentioned in the Trinity.
What does that mean for us?
How does it affect our lives and if so, how?
In Matthew chapter 7 Jesus said: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
Professing that Jesus is the Christ, our Saviour, the Messiah is just the beginning. So, what we do with that, is what truly matters. James puts it in this way: “We show our faith by what we do.” Our actions show our faith in the Lord. We show love toward people, care for each other, pray and support the poor, the needy, the lonely, the suffering and the one who has lost much.
Confessing and proclaiming that He is the Christ, just for the sake of saying, is not enough. Rather it should be our daily, minute by minute, life-long journey. By doing so we not only discover Jesus anew, but we discover ourselves anew.
As Paul writes in Philippians Chapter 3: “I want to know Christ. … Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect (arrived at my goal), but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of me” (vr. 10, 12).
As it did with Peter, the real journey begins when we answer with Peter: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
The journey continues as we learn what that means as we seek to live into what it means to follow Him!
What does it mean to follow Jesus when someone is hungry, thirsty, needs clothing or is sick?
We might add: “What does it mean to follow Jesus during the COVID-19 pandemic?”
“What does it mean to follow Jesus when people suffer, because they have lost loved ones, possessions, shelter and home because of a devastating explosion?
“Who do we say Jesus is when we are faced with decisions that have no easy answers, when the storms of life seek to overwhelm us, when faithfulness means risking it all for Him?”
“What does it mean to say Jesus is my personal Lord and Saviour, my example, my brother and friend?”
Who we say Jesus is, has everything to do with who and how we are and will be. It reveals how we will live and what we will stand up for. It guides our decisions and determines the actions we take as a church and the words we speak.
When Jesus asks us who we say He is, each of us must answer for ourselves.
Think about Peter … a fisherman, most probably all he had done before following Jesus was mending nets and catching and selling fish, now finds himself at a turning point in history and in his life, when Jesus is revealed as the Christ. And Jesus makes it clear that such insight cannot come from human thinking—but it is a revelation from God.
It is a gift from God!
Amen!