Pastoral Letter 91
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Greetings to you all.
I write this 91st Pastoral letter on the second week of my leave with more easing of COVID restrictions and NSW opening up and we are enjoying more freedom as we go back to our normal life. We will open our doors next Sunday for worship, 21 November, and all are welcome to attend, respecting the social distancing regulations and masks on. Singing is now allowed.
On Sunday, 28 November, we will celebrate St. Andrew’s Day together and go into Advent season preparing for Christmas and New Year celebrations. We will invite our neighbours to the service, followed by a special Morning Tea with free Sausage Sizzle from 11:00 am till 12:00 noon. Please refer to the Notices for coming programs and details.
With the initiative of Crows Nest Uniting Church, the Lower North Shore Zone Uniting Churches are having an Advent Study Series “Signs of the Times: Christ and Climate” led by Rev. Dr. Clive Pearson, the first was held last Thursday and will continue for the coming three Thursdays. The study is hybrid – face-to-face at Crows Nest Uniting Church and on Zoom. If you wish to join, make an effort to attend live or on Zoom, whichever suits you. The Zoom link Is:
Our dear friend Bob Minton has offered to prepare today’s Service and the message. Our thanks to Bob for always willing to help us by taking and leading Sunday Worship Service.
Please join the other members tomorrow morning in worship, light a candle and follow the Order of Service.
Here are some prayer points for this week:
1. Pray for tomorrow’s service and join in prayer with all the churches, praise, and worship God.
2. Pray as the COVID-19 restrictions are easing with a quicker pace and we look forward to reopening our doors on the 21st of November.
3. Pray for Mark as he was hospitalised and had his surgery.
4. Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
5. Pray for Lebanon as people are still in desperation and need help.
6. Pray for the Lower North Shore Zone’s Advent Study Series.
7. Pray as we prepare to go into the Advent Season and celebrate Christmas.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Krikor
MESSAGE
INTRODUCTION TO THE THEME
Violence, destruction, war and ridicule are common troubles that we all face in the world – perhaps even more so as we seek to follow Christ. The temptation is to respond in kind, offering violence for violence and using force to overcome force. However, the way of Christ, revealed through the Scriptures, is the way of peace, forgiveness, and faith in God’s ultimate justice. This way is demonstrated by Hannah’s prayers in the face of Peninnah’s taunts (and in her song when she presents Samuel at the temple), in Daniel’s prophecy of the shining resurrected ones, in the Psalmist’s celebration of God’s protection and guidance, and ultimately in Jesus’ self-giving on the cross.
It is interesting that, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ warnings are associated with the disciples’ awe at the temple building, which represented wealth and power. In a time when children were wealth, Peninnah’s mockery of Hannah was as much about power as it was about womanhood. Daniel’s prophecy, likewise, reflects on the conflicts of power against power. The way that Jesus demonstrated, which brings us into right relationship with God, and enables us to support and encourage one another presents a stark contrast to these violent power plays.
Hope Out of Hopelessness
Mark 13:1-8
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.
This is the last Sunday of “ordinary time”, of this particular Lectionary year – next Sunday is the festival of the Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday and is the final Sunday of what has been Year B – the year of Mark – the Sunday after that is the first Sunday of Advent – prelude or run up to Christmas.
Where did this year go to?
So, maybe it is not surprising that today – the image of birth is quite dominant.
The day is coming, we are told, when justice and peace will prevail, and God’s kingdom will be born among us.
In the Old Testament reading, we hear of the sorrow of a barren woman.
In the writing of the early church, present troubles are likened to the pangs of labour which precede new birth. Despite the stress and pain of the moment, there is hope for a better world.
One commentary on today’s passages says that they point to the present time as a time between the hopelessness of the past and the possibilities of the future.
Dorothea Mackellar’s poem MY COUNTRY – loved by all – includes these well-known words which describe Australia so well:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
These words were written at, or at least inspired by Dorothea’s time she spent in Gunnedah on the top end of the Liverpool Plains in North Western NSW.
Marg and I lived in Tamworth for over 40 years and spent many times driving over the New England North West region of the state – an area larger than the state of Tasmania!
Many times, these parts of the state suffer from extreme flooding from wash off cyclones or days of torrential rain from Southern Ocean lows or severe drought, but this area is a food bowl for many crops. I can well remember one of those times of drought.
Some years ago, we were driving back from Collarenebri to Tamworth, we passed through many areas where there were usually large paddocks of ripening wheat or heavily laden olive trees, this time, there were none. Farm dams were waterless craters like visible wounds in the landscape. Copeton Dam, on the head waters of the Gwydir River and one of the largest water storage dams in NSW with a storage capacity, when full, of 8 times the volume of Sydney harbour, was almost empty.
There would appear to be more reason for hopelessness than new possibilities, yet when we stopped for petrol in Moree in the midst of all that and commented on the difficulties the town and farming community must be experiencing, the man behind the counter in the service station agreed and then said: “Yeah, but every day brings you a day nearer to rain!”
He obviously saw the present time as a time between the hopelessness of the past and the possibilities of the future.
The story of Hannah, which we read in the first chapter of the first book of Samuel is probably a familiar one and it’s not difficult to discern the presence of hope in it. Eli is believed to have been a priest at Shiloh at around 1025 BC, so the story has been around for a long time. Hannah’s husband, Elkanah must have been quite well off since he could maintain two wives, a practice that was quite legal at that time.
We can see from the unhappy situation that developed why that practice was discontinued. Quarrels and misunderstandings can happen in any family, but jealousy would almost have been inevitable with rival wives, and especially if one was capable of bearing children and the other seemingly barren.
Hannah believed her only hope lay with God, and so her earnest prayer echoes across the centuries to resonate with women who similarly long for a child. And we hear Hannah bargaining with God … if a child is born, she vows, I will give him back – dedicate him to God’s service.
In the verses that follow, we read that the Lord remembered Hannah – created a wholeness that had somehow been lacking, and she conceived and bore a son – Samuel – sometimes described as “the Kingmaker” for his important role in Jewish history.
So – out of barrenness and hopelessness came hope and promise for the future.
The Macquarie dictionary defines hope as “the expectation of something desired – as confidence in a future event”. The Danish philosopher and theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, described hope as “a passion for what is possible.” I think both definitions would describe Hannah’s hope.
And what about you and me, as Christians, do we live with a passion for what is possible?
We know that that isn’t easy – apart from the weather, there are plenty of things to worry about – health problems, especially Covid-19 and the restrictions it has placed on our lives and lifestyle, from getting cancer to dementia – accidents.
We worry over there being no jobs for all the young people involved in final exams at the moment, seeking higher education but have had a very disrupted year or for those who have completed educational requirements – over all the risks associated with unemployment, the difficulties that the prospect of rising interest rates create for people with loans – these are just some of the things that form part of our everyday living whether we like it or not.
So, does the gospel offer us any hope today?
Not at first glance, but when we recall the background of this passage, and the fact that Mark wrote it after the temple had been destroyed by the Romans, when severe persecution of Christians was taking place, we then realise that Mark brought these words of Jesus to the people as words of reassurance and hope – yes, he says, dreadful things will happen, wars, earthquakes, famines, but they do not mean that the end has come.
These things are like going through the hard stage of labour before the birth can take place.
So, the summons sounded to these first Christians, as does to us, is not to hopelessness, but to faithfulness in Jesus Christ.
“When all is said and done, who knows what the future will hold?
What we do know”, wrote theologian, Frederick Buechner, in his book “Wishful Thinking”
“is that in a world without God, we know at least that the thing that will happen will be a human thing, no better or worse than the most that humanity can be. But in a world with God, we can never know what will happen.
God might even come to us in person.
God might even take our humanity in all its wholeness and brokenness upon himself.
God might even laugh with us, cry with us, strive with us, and suffer with us.
God might even die with us, go with us to death and through death.
God might even show us, in person, that sin is overcome by forgiveness, that evil is undone by goodness, that death is swallowed up in the victory of his grace.”
Great words, and true – words that certainly give us hope that whatever happens in life, God walks with us in the person of Jesus Christ, empowering us with his Spirit to live with a passion for what is possible – whatever that might be for you and for me and for those in our communities who are uncertain and fearful of the future – pray that we may be empowered to be bearers of hope.
Amen!
Bob Minton