Pastoral Letter 34

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

My heart continues to ache as I write this week’s letter. It has been almost four weeks since Azerbaijan first attacked Artsakh on 27 September. The number of the Armenian fallen soldiers has passed 900; most of them aged between 18 and 25. Azeri forces backed with Turkish military aircraft fighters and drones continue to target the innocent civilians of Artsakh and deliberately hit churches, schools and hospitals. Armenians are doing all they can to raise awareness within the international community and demanding their governments to condemn the aggression against the people of Artsakh and Armenia. The cries of the innocent children, helpless women and the elderly echoes in our ears. The pain and the hurt of the Armenians is great, and they need the solidarity of their brothers and sisters in Christ.

While the Uniting Church still hesitates to condemn the violations of human rights, I am glad to let you know that on Thursday the New South Wales Legislative Assembly passed a motion, with 61 Yes and only 2 No, to recognise the Republic of Artsakh. Joining with the Armenian community, I express thanks and gratitude to the NSW Parliament for being brave enough to take such a stand and hope and pray that soon the Federal Government takes similar action. As I have said last week, I am grateful to you all as you feel and understand my pain and pray for the people of Artsakh and Armenia with me. Your prayers and support mean a lot to me. Please continue to pray and seek God’s protection and comfort, especially for those who have lost sons, husbands and fathers and support financially if you can by donating to the “Artsakh Appeal” of the AMAA.

In regards to reopening our church doors, we believe that mid-November is a good time to resume our services as the restrictions are easing week by week. The Church Council agreed that we would target 22 November to be our first worship as a trial and formally start worshiping together on St. Andrew’s Day, 29 November, inviting our neighbours to join us. This will be finalised in our November meeting, which will be held on Wednesday 4 November, with the hope that things will be much better by then. I urge you to pray hard for this to happen by the grace of God. I am pretty sure that we will worship together and give thanks to God for keeping us safe all this time since mid-March. The Sunday services will carry us through for the rest of the year, with the hope that we will have a good start in the new year and commence the rest of the church activities in February. We will keep you posted. In the meantime, please join the other members tomorrow morning in worship, following the Order of Service and please light a candle. Once again thanks to Mark for faithfully suggesting hymns for every Sunday. I have used three of his suggestions this week and included two others. The hymn “All to Thee I Surrender” comes to us from Fresno, courtesy of Rev. Nerses.

We would like to remind you that we will not have our AGM, which we used to hold in October, instead we will send around the reports seeking your approval. The reports will be circulated soon. If you have any matter that you would have brought to the AGM, we kindly ask you to let Penny, Chris or myself know about it.

Please remember in your prayers Don and Margaret Murden, as Don is getting blood infusion treatment every three weeks and he is getting weaker. I had a long chat with Don earlier in the week and promised that we will pray for him. Please do so.

Continue to pray and remember the following points in your prayers:

1. Pray for Armenia and Artsakh as the violent war continues and the number of military and civilian casualties are growing by the day.

2. Pray seeking God’s help as we go through the difficult time of pandemic.

3. Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.

4. Pray for Don and Margaret Murden.

Krikor

No More Questions! He Has the Last Word!

Matthew 22:34-46

I am sure it makes us feel satisfied when we have the final say in any matter. Having the final say gives us the feeling of being in control and having things going the way we want to.

But that’s not what the scriptures tell us, though we read in our scripture lesson today that Jesus has the final say, since no one, even the religious leaders – the Pharisees and the Sadducees – were able to utter any more words. For Jesus has the final say! There were no more questions and He had the last word.

The passage we are looking at this morning occurred at the Temple just a few days before Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion. The Pharisees and Sadducees, as they have done on many occasions, had taken turns trying to trap Jesus in His words. The Sadducees had just tried to trap Jesus on the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. They came to Jesus with the ridiculous example of the seven brothers and the one wife. In the hypothetical example they gave, as the one brother died, the next had by law to marry her to raise children for his dead brother and the children would be the dead brother’s. Just to make it more ridiculous, this happened seven times. The Sadducees tried to say how unfair a resurrection would be, seeing that all of the brothers had a right to the wife.

But Jesus silenced them on two fronts.

First, the Kingdom is not about marrying and giving in marriage.

Second, God is the God of the living and the dead.

The Sadducees only believed in the authority of the first five books, called the Torah. They would have held the rest of the Old Testament to be inspired, but in a lesser sense. Jesus would have to prove the resurrection by the words of the Torah, which He did. He quoted God’s words to Moses in Exodus 3: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” God spoke of them in the present tense to Moses, “is” and not “was.” Therefore, God spoke of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as currently living. With this, Jesus told the Sadducees who denied the resurrection that God is “the God of the living and not the dead.” The Sadducees were silenced. Jesus had the last word.

Now the Pharisees try one last time to trap Jesus. They would certainly have agreed with Jesus teaching on the resurrection. But they were more united in their common hatred of Jesus than to praise Jesus for silencing the Sadducees. So, they attacked Him again.

They asked Jesus what the great commandment of the Law was. This question had been asked several times of Jesus, sometimes sincerely and sometimes, as in this case, to make Him take sides in a dispute which the Pharisees had with one another concerning this. Jesus answered by using the words of Deuteronomy 6:4. “You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The Pharisees agreed with this statement, which is indeed what sums up the first four commandments of the Law. Deuteronomy repeats the ten commandments first stated in Exodus. In the Exodus context, these words were spoken by God in the context of fear. The mountains shook. There were flashes of lightning. God was so holy that not one was to dare approach the mountain. But when the commandments are repeated in Deuteronomy, the context is that of love, the obedience of love and not fear. They are reminded that they were once slaves in Egypt, and therefore, to show mercy to others by allowing others to rest on the Sabbat.

Jesus added the words of Leviticus to the first great commandment. “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” This covers the rest of the Ten Commandments. It is logically true that one cannot love one’s neighbour until one loves God first. This is why the commandment to love God is first. But at the same time, it is not possible to love God entirely and not also love others.

So, the two commandments are basically one. When one also reads Deuteronomy, there is also special provision for the stranger within the gates, the widows, the orphans, and the poor. The Pharisees quoted the Deuteronomy a lot. But in many cases, their love for the neighbour was lacking. The love of the stranger was even more lacking. This became the basis of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The Pharisees wanted to limit the command of God to the nearest “Jewish” neighbour. But as Jesus quoted Scripture, no fault could be found in his exegesis, they could not criticize Him without showing their hypocrisy in front of the common people, whom they despised.

For thousands of years, generation upon generation, the Israelites followed the law of Moses; a set of some 600 laws by which they were to lead their lives. All these laws were considered equal, no one law was to be any more important than any other law. So, it is that the Pharisees decide one more time to try and trick Jesus into revealing that He is actually a false prophet. That’s why they sent in an expert of the law with the question: “What is the greatest commandment in the law?” I suppose he expected Jesus to say that all the commandments are equal, but that was not what Jesus did. You heard Christ’s answer: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind.”

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He tells the legal expert that there is a second commandment like the first, by which Jesus means that it is equally important to the first. “You must love your neighbour as you love yourself.” Then, as if to confirm the Pharisees’ belief that all commandments are equal, Christ concludes by saying: “All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

No violent attacks against foreign oppressors, no establishment of a powerful monarchy, just love of God and neighbour. Jesus lifted up the commandment to “love your neighbour” as like the commandment to love God, but Jesus did that because we cannot really fully, completely, totally love God—with all our heart, soul, and mind—unless we also love the people God loves, our neighbours. These two have to be held together because one is incomplete without the other.

Can you imagine what this world would look like if all Christians took seriously this great challenge, the greatest commandment and did indeed love God with all our heart, soul, and mind? It would completely turn this world upside down! Somehow the world turns into paradise and people live in peace and harmony. No more wars, terrorism, hatred, corruption and disgrace. In other words, the world will be perfect, as God intended it to be at the creation.

That’s the first part of this interesting discussion in our text, which was initiated by the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Jesus then turned the table of the questioners. He asked the Pharisees about their belief in the Messiah. “Whose son, is He?” Although there was some confusion among the Jews whether there would be one Messiah or two, the Pharisees understood Jesus was asking about the royal Messiah. There were others that thought there would be a priestly Messiah as well. Little did they know that Jesus was indeed both.

So, the Pharisees answered: “David.” Jesus then quoted Psalm 110:1. “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’.” To understand what Jesus is saying here, we need to look at the superscription to the psalm: “A Psalm of David.” This says that David is the author of the psalm and not the subject of it. It was not the words of someone else saying: “God said unto my lord David” as though it was the promise that David would reign forever. Jesus understands this “Lord” as being a descendant of David and not David. The Pharisees also understood this as well. They would have disagreed with Jesus saying that He is both God and the “Lord.” But they did hold that David was speaking of one of His descendants.

Then Jesus asked them the unanswerable question. If David is the father, how could his son be greater than him? The Jews held that the father is always the greater. So, it would be shocking when Jesus points out this paradox to them. David, whom the Pharisees especially revered, referred to one of his descendants as “my lord.” The rationalist Pharisees could not think through this answer. They were silenced too. Again, Jesus had the final word.

Jesus would follow up with His final sermon on the Temple. The next time Jesus would speak would be from His cross. If it was an unanswerable question about David calling his descendant “lord”, how much more unanswerable is how this “lord” would die on a cross for the sin of His subjects. From there, He would be raised from the dead and after a short period ascend into heaven, where He has the ultimate last word, the word of judgment. David rightly called His descendant “my Lord.”

On the surface, Jesus’ question seems very basic. Every faithful Jew knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Messiah will come from the lineage of David, and so he will be David’s son. And that’s exactly what the Pharisees say. I imagine at this point they started to feel a little proud as they think to themselves, “We had some pretty tricky questions for Jesus, and he asks us simple questions” But Jesus isn’t done yet. He extended His question further as he quotes from Psalm 110, a Psalm written by David himself. “Then how is it that David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, called him Lord when he said, The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right side until I turn your enemies into your footstool’? If David calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?”

The Pharisees were operating according to the same assumptions as we do about how a monarchy works. No King would defer to his son as Lord in such a system, and so the Pharisees are stumped. We, of course, with Jesus’ death and resurrection, know the answer to His question. The Messiah, though a descendent of the line of David, is the Lord of all; all heaven and earth and everything in God’s creation. David knows that this descendent, the Messiah to come, is greater than He, and so it is that He calls Him Lord. But the Pharisees didn’t see that, they didn’t understand. They knew Jesus was concluding that He was the Messiah, but this Messiah wasn’t doing what David’s son was expected to do. King David’s reign was revered in Jewish history because he united the Northern and Southern kingdoms, he ushered in a time of peace, prosperity, and power, and he laid the spiritual groundwork for the building of the Temple. As a result, the Jewish people had come to believe that the Messiah would be such a ruler; one who would overcome Roman oppression, and usher in peace, prosperity, and power. They expected a monarch, a military and political King who would save them from their woes.

But Christ was not that, far from it, and He has just told the Pharisees as much. In one of the best known of His teachings, Jesus unveiled the purpose of the Messiah, and the true nature of God. And it turns out, God is not a militaristic superpower. We serve, says Jesus, a God of love, and love is the only thing that God has wanted from his people from the very beginning.

The same is true of the greatest commandment to love God and love neighbours. Sure, it’s a challenge, and costly, but what gives it the name is what it is made of: it is made up of God, the God who is love.

Do you love God with all your heart, soul and mind?

Do you love your neighbour as you love yourself?

Are you striving after it?

Do you listen to what Jesus is saying?

Do you know that He has the final word?

As in this case He did and no one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask Him any more questions.

For He is the Lord. He is the One with the final authority, but also the one “who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant … he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on the cross” (Phil. 2:6-8).

Amen!